Some Newb Questions..

OK so i have a dv6t QE and i have a few questions:

1. How can squeeze all the performance I can out of my machine? I heard something about a minimal restore? What is that? and will I lose all my data? Anything else I could do?

2.How can I squeeze the most battery life out of my machine? And How can I turn off my touch pad light to conserve power?

3. Can I install windows 8 right now? Is it risky since its just a developer build?

4. Is it hard to dual boot windows and OSX? If i installed OSX would i get better battery life like macs do?

IM mostly concerned about questions 1 and 2.

Thanks

 

1. Minimal restore resets your computer to factory conditions, but without all the bloatware it shipped with (trial versions, shortcuts to product websites, etc.) You'll just have Windows and the drivers for your hardware, plus the necessary HP utilities. You will lose all of your data.

2. Set the power scheme to Power Saver and make sure you're using the power-saving GPU when on battery. I don't know of a way to turn off the touchpad light, but it draws a negligible amount of power anyway.

3. I wouldn't try to use it as your primary OS. If you do install it, do it on a separate partition and dual boot.

4. Installing Mac OS on a Windows PC is significantly more difficult than you might think, and might not be possible at all on the dv6t, I'm not sure. It wouldn't result in better battery life anyway. The reason Macs have such good battery life is because the actual battery is better.

 

There are a number of great threads that answers these questions and they are easily found.