To wipe or not to wipe

[sysbuilder]

Here's a question I've had for some time. Hopefully someone can clarify.

When I purchase a new laptop I want to wax the load that comes on it and load an image via RIS. Now, am I going to be better off wiping this new laptop with 1's and 0's before loading an image or am I OK booting to the LAN and simply throwing an image over top of whatever comes preloaded?

Am I going to get better system stability by wiping what's factory loaded and then loading from scratch or is there no difference, meaning loading straight over the factory OS won't make a difference in terms of my OS stability.

Thanks in advance.

[jondercik]

there is no need to wipe the drive before throwing an image on it. The only time you need to wipe a drive is when you want to be sure that no one can recover the data on it.

[Lazy8]

It's entirely a privacy/security issue, and has nothing to do with performance or stability. Wipe the drive before selling/transferring a computer to a third party, to protect your current users' confidential data.