Do you REFORMAT your M11x r1-r3 when you receive it brand new?

Hi!

How many of you do a clean reformat on your M11x when you receive it? I used to do a clean reformat on my laptops to get rid of the "pre-installed" programs. For faster performance purposes and partition.

Please advise.

Cheers!

 

These don't get bundled with to muych useless crap unlike many other systems. I just remove the AV trial and run ccleaner. I also personally like to remove the recovery partition if i have an SSD.

 

regardless of revision i don't use their dell datasafe/alien respawn software therefore i just reformat it all.

 

I also used to reformat my laptops when I got them, but with my current M11xR2, I did not due to the fact that they did not have much bloatware. However, another reason why I did not do the reformat was because I had read some people say that it was hard to get the systems back to 'factory' settings and they lost some of their customized alienware settings like the boot screen graphics and stuff.

However, with my M11xR3 that will be coming, I plan to use my own SSD this time around, and will be doing a fresh install. Anyone have specific steps to reinstalling the system to factory default minus the alienware restore partition & datasafe stuff? I am very familiar with using the windows recovery disk to reinstall windows, just not sure how to make sure I get back the Alienware bootup splash screen where you input your windows username and password. I am assuming that all the necessary software drivers can be downloaded off the dell site after you login to your alienware ownership account. As mine will come with the GOBI mobile card, I guess the drivers for the AT&T GOBI card will also be included in the download section of the site.

 

Pretty close results

 

install from a USB stick too: much faster!

 

I reformat when I get a new laptop. Even though there wasn't any crap on my M11x, I still reformatted and deleted the recovery portion of the hard drive. Reformatting made the laptop snappier compared to the install that was originally on the laptop when I received it.

 

This -REALLY- depends on the speed on the USB device. Plus, there is time involved in setting up the USB stick to make it a bootable windows image.

External USB DVD drive is generally a mover faster overall solution.

 

many ppl say that Alienware/Dell doesnt put much bloatware on their PCs, which may be true. but out of the box it took my R1 about 3min to boot after i uninstalled comandcenter and all the other stuff i didnt need.

so i reformated and boot time went down to under a minute on the same HDD. go figure... just a bad clone? who knows but both my new R1s where like this and so was 2 of my other friends R1s (one refurb/one new).

 

I'm not planning on reformatting my R3 when I receive it unless there is a real performance issue due to the pre-installed programs.

 

probably doesn't but at least you know what you put into it when you do a full reformat!