What do you need to check for a new laptop?

As title...
Hardware
+
Software
What do I need to check?


thank you very much for time!

 

huh? what do you mean?
Do you mean how to check if the components you ordered are the correct ones?

 

Or do you mean what specs your after?

 

when laptop is in a box after i've unboxed the laptop
what do i need to check on it??

 

Carefully pry open the lid of the laptop and examine the keyboard. Tentatively prod the delete key. If satisfied, drag your finger to the power button. Press down. Look up at the screen. If it lights up, stand and exhale slowly. The laptop. It works.
Post if you wish to continue with a thorough examination of your purchase.

 

Just like an electronics you have owned. Power on... test the ports, test the optical drive, install anti-virus software, install updates for windows, anti-virus software, and any other software you want/need.

 

Also, it's very important to check for bloatware that you don't want/need. These pre-installed programs are very annoying and should be uninstalled right away

 

If you want to make sure the hardware you received is the hardware you ordered, you can go to your control panel (make sure it is set to classic view), then System (you can verify processor speed and RAM here) -> Hardware Tab -> Device Manager to get a full listing of your devices.

If you're concerned that the hardware may not be working properly, you can run chkdsk on your hard drive (start -> run -> chkdsk) and Memtest86 on your RAM. There are several threads that mention Memtest86, but basically you just download the .ISO from memtest.org, then use Nero, DeepBurner, or a similar ISO burning utility to burn a CD and boot from that CD (let it run at least 4 hours).

It would help to know, however, what you actually want to check.

 

Well heres one: Go buy a WINXP cd after arrivil power on put disk in drive turn off & turn back on. Next, begin clean install.

 

1. start up a computer,
2. create network connection,
3. open IE, type in the address "www.getfirefox.com"
4. once you downloaded and installed firefox, start it up, tell it to be default browser, and than download:
a. process explorer from sysinternals
b. VLC from videolan
c. putty, nmap, and liveCD of knoppix or USB distro of puppy,
d. get skype, enemy territory and trackmania nations...
....

 

First check the notebook without opening the lid. Check for scratchs on the paint, check the corners, check the bottom to see if a cover is... uhm.. don't know the word in english.. is "not placed firmly" if it "moves too much"..

After that open up the lid slowly (always be gentle doing this or your lid may get loose.. loose! that was the word xDD) and check for imperfections on the screen like scratches. If there ain't any, check the keyboard. You might wanna press each key to feel the keyboard and also notice any key that might have problems "like popping out). This should not happen but, you asked for what to check.

Then turn on the notebook. After you get into Windows (or the OS, and hopefully you got into it... if you didn't well, thats a big trouble xDD), check all the ports because some ports you don't tend to use, after some months you realize they don't work. Put a penndrive to check every USB port. Check Wireless, check your bluetooth, check the optical drive (read a CD and a DVD, try to burn a CD or DVD also, because sometimes they read but don't write and if you buyed a writer...).

Then you might want to open notepad and check every key... there shouldn't be any problems. This might seem (and actually be) a little boring but hey, you never know.

Check the webcam. If it doesn't work it may just be a "Vista" issue (Widnows VIsta), maybe downloading latest drivers and it should work.

Open up "system manager" or whatever is called in english (on control panel), and check your specs, they shpuld match to what you paid for. Also check HDD space (My PC), if you buyed a 160GB HDD it should say like "155" or something, it's almost never gonna be "160GB" exactly but it can't be too less.

This next steps are up to you. Some preffer to do a clean install, others a semi-clean install and others (like me) just uninstall the bloatware and clean the registry and HDD (CCleaner) and that's almost done.

Unninstall all the bloatware (trial software that you might never use, software that you know you won't be using and so on).

Then reboot and you get a nice laptot. Of course there are looots of stuff to do to really improve your laptop and left it personalized. Theres Tune Up XP (don't remember the exact name) to speed up the boot, of course you might change your theme and that sort of stuff but that it's entirely up to you.

Hope this was usefull and please forgive any misspeling.

Edit: Ohh.. almost forgot, if you had a zero dead pixels policy, check for dead pixels with that little program that i can't remember the name. But if you didn't, i recommend not checking for dead pixels because if you have one and you never notice... i won't ever bother you and you'll never get your eyes into it. But if you check for it and you find one... everytime you look at your screen your eyes will see the dea dpixel and that's annoying...

 

Physically. Brand New Spanking Laptop.

1. Take it out of the Box and slowly check the outer cover of the box. there should be no loose covers and scratches, check

a. the top cover.
b. the bottom side.
c. the left side.
d. the right side.
e. the back side.

make sure there are not scratches and nothing is loose

Then open the laptop and look at the screen closely, check the screen if there are any scratches.
Then check the Multimedia keys and keyboard keys. make sure you can press on all of them, and they all dont get stuck, esp. the multimedia keys.

Locate the power button and turn on the laptop, once into windows xp or vista, plug in the USB mouse or usb drives on ALL the slots and make sure they are regonized. Turn on the lan and bluetooth and test them if they work connecting through a network or just recognizing a bluetooth device.

Check the card reader if any, with multiple cards,(ima gadget freak so i have all formats from my gadgets)

Check the CD/DVD drive and try to watch a movie and pump the volume to full, try writing a CD (best test is when you make a recovery disk)

If you have a VGA port and a projector by all means test that out.

Now plug in the battery, almost all the time battery brand new is only half charged.

Start testing the webcam and mess with the brightness settings and contrast settings, this sould warm up the montior and see there are no problms like bright spots and what not.

Also try using the touch pad, run circles and go a bit crazy but dont press too hard on it.

turn the laptop off, then on, and leave it for maybe 1 hour, while plugged, if it randomly crashes then theres a problem with the battery

after a full charge do unplug the charger and see how long the battery will last.

il add more stuff when i can think off but yeah thats basically it.

 

Dothack,

How do you clean the registry? And what does CCleaner do?

 

@deepakvrao:

CCleaner actually cleans the registry. Just run CCleaner's registry cleaner (make sure you allow it to back up your registry first).

Run the registry cleaner several times, as it tends to find new issues after it fixes the first batch. I normally run it until it doesn't find any more issues.

CCleaner also does general Windows maintenance (cleaning up temporary files and things like that).

 

I highly recommend downloading and installing PC World's 15 Best downloads of the year on any new machine:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140721/article.html