just bought new laptop, what do i need to know?

Hi, I just bought a P7811FX display model from BB, it was the last one they had. It's replacing a 4 year old Acer Ferrari 3000. Anyways, I'm not the most computer savvy person and thought I'd ask here to see if there's anything I should do right off the bat with my new computer. BB wanted to charge me to "optomize" it for me, but am assuming it's all stuff that I can do myself?

I looked through the first few pages of the 7811FX thread, and in this Gateway forum... had no idea there was this much information on here about these computers. I'll continue to look through those posts when I have time. I was really looking for like a beginner's guide or something to that affect. When it comes to the more technical talk I get lost pretty quick.

Otherwise I'm excited about my new computer, albeit a little poorer now lol. I've never been big into computer games but I'm a student pilot and definately looking forward to playing with Flight Simulator. thanks

 

Burn your recovery discs very soon.

 

What is the purpose of recovery disks? Should I do that even though there was a "Windows Vista OS Disk" included?

Should I not download or install any programs on my computer untill I get that done? What kind of CD/DVD's should I buy to use for that? Any suggestions where I can find a good set of directions to make the recovery disks?

Sorry for all the dumb questions.

 

The recovery disc will be your drivers for the laptop. Its just a convenient way to get them if you ever want to do a clean install. (makes life easier)

The "how to" is actually in your instruction manual. Its pretty easy, just follow the instructions and you cant really mess it up. A single DVD should hold all the drivers.

Make the driver recovery disc first, then go wild with installing what ever you want

 

The Windows CD just has the Vista operating system on it... what the recovery discs will give you are backups of your default drivers and pre-installed programs so that if something happens you can get those back... if you want them.

Usually the first thing I do after making my recovery discs is go through all the programs and un-install anything I don't need or will ever use.

((that's a lie in a way... in truth I usually make the CDs, make a backup of the recovery files and transfer them to my RAID drives on my desktop then reformat the whole laptop HDD (removing the recovery partition as well) then reinstall a fresh copy of Windows and install the latest drivers downloaded fresh))

 

If you are comfortable installing OS then do fresh, but the 7811 is fairly clean so fresh is not as big a deal compared to HP or Dell. A few minutes of crap removing and you should be good.

Saving the drivers somewhere is always a good idea. And if you do not have a working Vista disk, then by all means, you want one. So do the recovery disks.

Check you screen for oddities, prop the back up for air circulation and be very happy. My 7811 has ruined me for other lesser, mortal laptops. I can never go back to the common herd.

 

Cool thanks guys. I made the recovery disk, went to 'uninstall programs' and got rid of everything that I didn't think I needed. Decided a fresh install might be a good idea, so just used the gateway recovery management program and did restore to factory defaults (this is what was meant by fresh install right?).

So now how do I make sure I have all the latest drivers? Is there a tutorial or something for this, I couldn't find one.

Other question now is what's recommended for anti-virus and all that stuff? I uninstalled Norton but then a message popped up saying there's no anti-virus protection. Should I have kept that or use something else?

Also, can I install MS Office 07 on this computer if i already installed it on my old one? Or does Vista and 64-bit mean it won't work? Does software need to be 64-bit in order to run, or will my old copy of MS Flight Simulator run on it?
thanks

 

FRESH INSTALL:
By fresh install we mean formatting your hard drive and installing your preferred version of Windows via a Windows install disk... but if you've removed the programs you didn't want and Windows is running fine and you're happy you certainly don't "need" to do a fresh install.

The only reason I do a fresh install is that even if you uninstall programs there's almost always something left of it... plus there are usually "performance" setting changes made by some PC makers that you generally can't undo unless you know what changes they made. Again, it's not a big deal... I just feel "cleaner" after a new install... kinda like takinig a shower vs a bath.

Again... if you're happy with the way things are running there's really no need to do a fresh install. When things are running fine it's far more of a personal opinion to do it.


DRIVERS:
As for the drivers there are two things to do... you can do the easy thing and just head over to Gateway.com and load up the page for your laptop and download the drivers there... these may or may not be updated versions of the ones already installed on your system but at least it's easy and you know they should be fine most of the time.

IF you want to go the more "hardcore" route... then you'll be tracking down the maker of each of the parts of your laptop and searching for more up to date drivers directly from the part maker. An easy example would be if your graphics chip is made by nVidia... instead of going to gateway.com... you'd go to nvidia.com and download the driver direct.

The benefit of this is that most hardware makers update their drivers far more often than gateway updates their site. And generally, gateway gets the drivers from the maker as well... but they tend to run a few more "quality tests" or tweak the driver to their system before placing a newer version on the "official" laptop page.

Again, this comes down to personal choice and how much work you want to do to be "up to date" with your drivers. If you're not having any problems then I wouldn't worry too much about it as sometimes it can be a pain to correctly ID your hardware and get the correct driver.

I do recommend getting the latest graphics card driver though as those tend to fix serious issues in games and increase performace. If you card is an nVidia I think they've just started releasing updated drivers for laptops on their site... but if not there's always http://www.laptopvideo2go.com


64bit vs 32bit

First drivers... you'll want to make sure that you find 64bit drivers for all your hardware if you're running a 64bit Vista. Also, the drivers for 64bit will need to be "signed" by microsoft or they won't be allowed to run. ((unless they've removed this requirement)).

As for regular software... on a 64bit OS you can run 64bit AND 32bit so don't worry... but if you're running a 32bit OS you can ONLY run 32bit.

With that said... you can sometimes have issues with 32bit software in a 64bit OS as technically they're running the 32bit software in a "virtual" setting to allow the 32bit application to run.... but this isn't that big of an issue and on the same note you can have problems in general with ANY software so it's a wash.

You should be able to install MS Office 07... I've never had two copies of office installed at one time so I'm not sure if there are any issues or if it does an "auto upgrade" thing.

As for your flight sim, I don't use it... but just try to install it and see if you have any issues. If you find issues the first thing to do would be to update your video card and maybe your audio drivers to see if that helps... also get any updates and patches for the game and try again. If it still fails.... I would think on that game there's a tech support community that might have a fix for 64bit vista to help you out.

Hope this helps.

 

Office is fine to have multiple versions or it may just upgrade if thats what you want. If you are concerned with Access then install it to a different folder as it may cause issues with multiple office versions