Yosh1

Thanks v. much for this Cooper. The reason I stated a laptop is that I currently don't have space for a PC at the moment as I'm in between houses due to personal circumstances. A PC would be the best option, I agree, but I'd need to be living somewhere on a permanent basis for that which should be not so long in the future - I hope. I wasn't aware of the virtual box as of yet but will look into those details further. I did have a look for pen testing stuff on here before ansking but if I'm being honest I wasn't really sure in what I was searching for other than should I use a second-hand laptop :). Thanks for the clarification, it's appreciated and will now do some searching on the topics you've given me and check that link out.

Hi, I'm currently looking for a new laptop to use separately from my personal laptop. I'm currently looking to advanced my Software Testing career into Penetration Testing so am doing a number of courses such as EC-Councils CEHv8, CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+. I'm assuming that I'll need to learn to use the tools etc which is why I don't want to use my personal laptop. This is due to having a Mac with a Windows 8 partition but am worried that due to inexperience with these tools that I could effectively leave my laptop open to exploit especially since I can still access the Mac partition from the Windows side. Is there any reservations about buying a second-hand laptop? I've always bought new and I know that second-hand hard drives are pretty much a no, no - well definitely for me anyway. The main question I have is that should I be worried about using a second-hand laptop with a brand new hard (installed by me) because I don't know what it's previously been used for? Also if anyone can provide insight into using my own laptop I'd appreciate that as I'd like to use that if I could. P.S. I know that Lunux is a big player in here so will be looking to install that somewhere at somepoint too. Thanks in advance :)