Is it really worth it to reformat my XPS M1330

I removed all of the bloatware from my new XPS M1330. When I go into Add/Remove Programs basically what I see is everything there would be, even if I were to reformat it. I don’t see anything listed that I would want to remove. With that said is there still any reason / benefit to reformat?

 

its best to reformat your new laptop

 

Typically a reformat is the only way to be 100% sure that the laptop is completely clean and ready for you to load whatever you want on there with nothing else. There area always stray registry settings and entries that are not taken away with simple uninstalling of bloatware, as well as background processes that may be rather bloated still. But if you have already spent so much time with uninstalling everything individually, perhaps you wouldn't want to spend another 2 or 3 hours doing a reinstall. I pretty much recommend that everyone here do a reformat with a new laptop just for the peace of mind knowing it is completely their stuff that is on it.

 

I always do after I've had it for a few days and am satisfied that everything is OK with the laptop. However, it's certainly not essential. And if someone asks the question, "do I really need to do it?" then it's likely that they don't want to do it. And if you don't want to, then don't. While on a board like this it may seem as if everyone does it, in the real world the percentage of people who get a brand new laptop and immediately wipe the drive is miniscule. And life goes on.

Basically, if it's a project that you want to undertake, then by all means it's a great idea. Makes you more comfortable and confident with the notebook as well since you've proven that you can blow it away and set it back up yourself. But you certainly don't need to if you'd rather not.

Enjoy.

 

If 500MB of space matters to you and you want to keep Mediadirect, dont. If you dont care about Mediadirect, yes. Reason being when you first receive your laptop the partion MD takes up is 2.5GB, however after following reformatting procedure, the partition is 3GB and any change made to that partition will result in boot sectors getting screwed up.

Seriously though, the bloatware is minimal and the folders you see are easily located in the C drive and contain backup drivers, etc. With the exception of a few programs like Roxio, there really isn't as much bloat as you may think. In fact, having 2 M1530s side by side, one reformatted, one not reformatted and loaded up with firefox, some games, etc. Both having installed the latest windows updates... the reformatted booted up slower by 4 seconds in comparison. Updating the reformatted one to SP1 resulted in slowdown by an additional 3 seconds.

Before I reformatted the first M1530 though, I did do a bootup test, and it had beaten the other one by a good 9 seconds. However, after reformatting... its speed decreased substatially.

Thats why I'm not reformatting and will be returning the reformatted one.

 

Forte, just did a MD reinstall last nite and the partition actually went from 2.5gb down to 2.0 gb. It is a new DVD sent from dell. It is release 3.5.