How can I erase all the info on my Mac.

Hi, my mom bought a new computer and gave me her Mac. Since she used it for a couple of years, it has all her information and stuff and this has made the mac very slow. I have a Macbook Pro for work but I want this for my house. I would like that everything is synced.
I don't know how to erase all this information in the computer and start using it as it was new.
I already changed my AppleID for hers, but nothing changed and there's still everything there. I looked it up in a couple of blogs and a lot of them say I should press Command + r, but when I do this, nothing happens.
Can you help me please?
Thanks

It depends how old the Mac is and what version of OS X you have installed.
If you have OS X 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9, you should have a recovery partition. That means that, if you reboot (choose restart from the Apple menu), and as soon as the screen turns black, hold down cmd-R and keep those two keys held down. You should restart from the recovery partition, and see various options such as install, etc. You actually want to use Disk Utility from the Utilities menu to erase the drive, and then follow the prompts to install OS X.
If you have 10.6 or earlier, you will not have the above option, and must find the original installation DVD and boot from it by holding down the C key on reboot. Again, use Disk Utility from the Utilities menu to erase the hard drive, then install a new system.
However, you may be able to regain a good deal of room without doing the above. In System preferences, Accounts (or Users and Groups, depending what version of OS X you have), create a new user and set it as an administrator. Use your name and whatever short name you'd like. Now, log out, and log back in as that new user. Go back to System preferences and delete your mom's old user, using the minus sign at the bottom left. You should choose to delete all files immediately.
This option will keep all applications that are installed, but will remove all personal files and give you a new, clean login.
Matt

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