Pimp My Inspiron

I figured it might be useful to throw together a sort of user-guide for what should be done as we all receive our shiny new Inspiron's in the coming weeks. What programs must be uninstalled What drivers do we need to download? Post here, and I will compile it all into a nice, tidy document that we can save for posterity's sake.

WORK IN PROGRESS
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Introduction
Dude, You Got a...Dell?

So you just opened up your nice, shiny new Inspiron. Yeah, you heard the Customer Support might not be so great, but who needs Customer Support when you can get it in Espresso Brown. The aim of this guide is to hold your hand and walk you through the dark land of bloatware, past the valley of Hardware Optimization, down the sharp cliffs of configuring Vista, into the promise land of a fully tricked out notebook.

It should be noted that the following is merely a list of suggested modifications. The following has been built entirely from user contributions and a little old fashioned research. It is left to each reader to decide what and what not you choose to do to your Inspiron. At the end of the day, you have to do whats best for you. That said, you can be sure that this list has been written for the novice (heck, its even being written by a novice) and most of the below tasks should not be very difficult to implement.

First, lets take a look at getting rid of that bloatware...

Phase One: Removing The Bloatware
'Cause No, You Don't Want to Try Netzero Six Months Free

 

gadgets! multi meter, battery, lan status..

 

yeh.... i badly wanted to know which all are the "must have" drivers for my inspiron.......

 

Bump- this is a good idea, and it is generous of OP to volunteer to compile advice. OP hits on two key issues: 1) our Inspirons will arrive with a depressingly large amount of bloatware/crapware and 2) there must be some folks out there with good advice on what drivers, diagnostics, useful freeware etc. they're downloaded for their new computers. I'd love to hear from new Inspiron owners as to what they removed and what they added when they received their notebooks.

 

First thing I would do is get Cleartype tuner... from microsoft. XP version is available, but it DOES work for Vista fine (ignor compatiblity warning). It darkens cleartype text and makes it much more viewable for laptops.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Second... get speedfan or your choose of temperature monitors.

Third... disable UAC

Fourth... hard disk cache is disable by default, enable it

 

whats UAC and how do u enable hard disk cache?

 

for me...disable hard drive file indexing, and possibly change to the windows classic interface (lol -- good for performance regardless of how un-aero-like it is)

 

I will be putting each of that suggestions into a cleaner version in the first post -- for now.

UAC can be disabled a number of ways. Check this link: http://www.petri.co.il/disable_uac_in_windows_vista.htm

I don't have my inspiron yet, so I'm not quite sure if hard disk cache is required.

I will begin making the nice post tonight, and will update it periodically as people make suggestions.

 

why would you disable UAC if it's for safety?

 

OKAY, these are the useful free things that I have since installed on my laptop...

1.) Uninstall Vista and make copy of Ethernet driver if needed.
Easiest thing to do to "uninstall" is a clean install of Vista, though you may want to download the Ethernet port driver first and make a backup on a USB drive or something if you don't have wireless internet at your house. I noticed that my driver CD did not come w/ the ethernet driver.

2.) Reinstall resource CD and download better nvidia driver from laptopvideo2go.com
After a clean install... install all the drivers from the resource CD and the ethernet driver minus the geforce 8400m gs driver. Go to laptopvideo2go.com and grab either 162.22 or 158.36. Both give better performance than the stock drivers that come from dell. The 158.36 also let you overclock with ntune/rivatuner/atitools (BE CAREFUL WITH OVERCLOCKING)

3.) Install some software - Firefox, VLC, Thunderbird, Pidgin, utorrent, daemon tools, I8kfangui, adaware, spybot search and destroy, hamachi, jkdefrag

Firefox is a better browser than IE. VLC is a stand alone player that allows you to watch almost any type of video file and play almost any type of audio file. Thunderbird is an email client. Pidgin is a replacement for aim. utorrent is a small compact torrent client. Daemon tools allows you to mount CD/DVD images instead of burning them. I8kguifan allows you to monitor different temperatures on your laptop. Adaware and Spybot both protect your computer from malicious spyware. Hamachi lets you LAN over the internet (use free version.) JKdefrag is a windows defragging utility that works better than the one windows provides.

 

UAC is annoying... unless you really have no clue what you're doing on a computer I'd disable UAC. It pops up the windows that go "you must comfirm blahblahblah." I think as long as you don't go clicking on things that say "freemoney.exe" you'll be okay without it.

 

for most...the annoyance isn't worth it

 

If you have disabled UAC, you have no clue what you are doing.

 

^_^

+1

 

It would seem there is some debate over disabling UAC

 

The first idea I want to discuss is that of a reinstallation of Vista -- I'd wager this is the best and surefire way to get rid of bloatware -- and I hear it makes Vista run a lot faster too.

Also, it would allow for the installation of fresh drivers.

I began the construction on the first post.

 

Ok guys for the 8600m GT which version to choose from laptopvideo2go.com