pabloruiz said:
i've been wanting to get a mac for a while now and my boss just gave me his old iMac it runs with os 8.1..anyways his old documents/pictures/etc are still in the disk
Starting from
zero might not be the best course... but getting rid of the personal files of the previous owner would be.
The problem with Mac OS 8.1 is that, well, it is a messy OS. In later versions of Mac OS 8 and 9, there were a lot of specific folders for things that 8.1 hadn't started following closely yet.
Because of that, it makes it hard to tell you were to start.
One thing to do is to move all the applications into a main application folder. And when moving applications, if they are in their own folder... move the whole folder into the applications folder (many apps have additional files that they need within their own folders and will not function properly when removed from their folder).
It should be pretty straight forward to see what is personal and what is system/application related items on your drive then. Just toss the personal stuff.
As for 8.1, there are a handful of preferences that can be removed that are specific to the original owner. Once gone, these will be recreated, but this time for you.
Currently I'm on a dead line, so I don't have time to list everything you should do right now, but I should have time to be much more specific tomorrow. I'll use my 8.1 system as a reference to help guide you to all those items.
Mac OS 8.1 is a very nice system. I hope you have fun with it. I'll make some suggestions as to software (with links) that would make a nice addition for it tomorrow too.