Tips for a Noobie

Well, I'm ordering the laptop tonight, DV9500T, and being this is my first laptop, I was wondering if you all could give me some tips of what not to do, whats good for the laptop, etc.

I sure don't want to screw it up, and considering I've never owned a laptop, I'm sure there happens to be some things I am bound to not know.

Thanks for any help!

And thank you for those who talked to me about building the computer, very helpful!

 

Don't:
Download viruses
Throw the laptop at anyone's face
Use the laptop underwater

Do:
Caress the laptop while giving it words of comfort
Read it a bedtime story
Play hide and seek with it

Just use the laptop like a normal person and you'll be fine.

 

I would say order the laptop with as little ram as possible after checking the prices. Usually hp and dell overcharge for RAM and you can usually pick up a few gig sticks off of newegg for cheaper and put them in yourself.

 

I knew I'd get a response like this

 

Upgrading from one gig to two, is only 50 dollars more, I think thats reasonable don't you?

 

Depends on what your end goal amount of RAM is.

I got mine with 2GB's as well with the same thought process as yours. I just bought a 2GB stick of ram, which replaced one of the 1GB sticks that came with mine. However, I think I'm still going to install 64bit Vista and get another 2GB stick to get to 4GB total. If I do that, it would have been wiser for me to paid $50 less for my laptop since I won't be using any of the RAM that came with it.

Does that make sense? If you plan on sticking with 2GB, I'd say your fine. However, if you know you want to upgrade, you should think more closely about what your end goal amount is.

 

Yeah I understand, I think 2 GIGs will be enough for me, but if not, I guess I can always buy more as you did, but I don't think it'll be necessary.

 

That's exactly what I thought as well... until I saw how sluggish Vista is compared to my XP desktop.

 

2 GB of RAM is more than enough for Vista. It's a resource hog, but it's not that obese.

 

Yeah, a couple of my friends have vista with 2 gigs, and it runs smooth as far as I could tell.

I think some of these people are maxing out there computer space, and then when it's slow they blame it on Vista

 

maxing out computer space? What does that even mean?

I've done a completely clean install of Vista, ran all the tweaks, removed every unecessary startup service, turned off every unnecessary feature and its still quite a bit slower than a lesser spec'd desktop with XP. Whether or not someone notices the difference or just plain accepts it is an entirely different question.

 

As in maxing it out, to where it takes forever to load things up.

Example:

I installed a lot of fonts back when I use to do a lot of photoshoping, took like 5min to boot my computer up, and I was pissed about it, I'm sure it'll work the same way.

 

try my out of the box guide
orev's clean install guide
and flamenko's optimization guide

 

I got a good tip; never use a registry cleaner program. And learn how to spell newbie. Just kidding. Good luck with your new notebook.

 

Also make sure that you monitor your laptop's temperatures.

 

Some things to take care of:

1. Burn a Recovery Disk set as soon as you receive your laptop. Make sure that you do it even if you have ordered a Recovery Disk set. It pays to have a backup available always.

2. Register your laptop with HP. You'll receive updates for new driver releases.

3. If you are fine with the additional softwares (mostly crapware!) that come installed initially, its fine. Else, uninstall all unnecessary stuff. These are covered in detailed guides in this forum.

4. Update Windows. This would ensure that your Windows version is all patched up.

5. Programs - Install all the programs that you use or intend to use. In case any program does not work, look out for compatibility patches on the web. It would make your job easier and ease your hassles .

 

Thank you for that, I even sent that to my grandmother, I'm sure she'd like to have something like that.

Sounds like a plan, and I do all of those already for the most part, #5, 4, 3, and 2, just #1 I never did, but considering the new computer will be here soon, and this one is like 5 years old, I probably wont need it.

I might just use this to encode videos and such due to the laptop thing. Some people say it's fine, other's say its not, so ill cap it, drag it over on to this with a network, and then mess with it on this computer.

 

wotever you do DONT eat a sandwhich with the notebook still in ur lap