Hi, I'm also a silver surfer - but only daughter with a car has just bought a new Ibiza SC - so her horrible but reliable Ibiza 1.4 (6K model) is now someone else's problem!
Buying dodgy s/w from ebay, I can't say that I have not done that, but really you do need a "garage laptop" - ie one that never gets connected to the internet - both ETOS for part numbers etc and ELSAWin are handy - though ELSAWin is a pain to get into and it wants you to to jump all over the place. Trouble is with some of these ebay bits of s/w is that they are trial copies or back-ups and to get extended use out of them you keep need to turn the PC clock back!
Personally I'd stick with Haynes and maybe where it is vague try to find what you want in ELSAWin.
One other thing, normally I'd suggest that you buy oil filters from VAG as they will probably be just as cheap - or cheaper, and you are getting "the right thing".
Maybe you should also consider sniffing around the Seat site (
http://www.seatcupra.net) - don't be put off by the name, and the Skoda site (
http://www.briskoda.net) as all these Fabia > Polo 9N > Ibiza 6L are the same underneath - and generally speaking these two sites get more "technical" traffic - best is the Skoda one foloowed closely by the Seat one - this is not a critisism of Polo people, its just the way things are - ie people that buy Skoda do tend to try to sort them themselves and to a slightly lesser extent so do Seat owners. I've had to look after a Polo 9N since late 2002 and it was the Skoda site that I turned to for help - makes sense as the Fabia was launched before the Polo, eventually the Seat site started to more traffic for the Ibiza 6L but that took a bit longer!
If you do take up my advice and do a bit of surfing on these sites, make sure that you search for "1.2 engine" issues - so that you are prepared to minimise possible disasters (chain jumping).
Oh, sorry, welcome to this form!
Whoops, you are posting into the wrong section - you should be posting into the "previous" one as this one is dedicated to the "face-lifted" 9N Polo - known as 9N3 whereas your car will be 9N1 or 9N2 (I can't remember which one was the saloon that is sold elsewhere).
Maybe a moderator could move this posting across??