Purchased V200, lots of questions (clean install, lenovo softwares, hdd noise, battery, etc)

I've just received my Lenovo 3000 V200 0764-2CU and since it's the first laptop I've actually bought, I've got a ton of questions.

Clean Install
The notebook comes with Vista Business with a bunch of junk and I want to do a clean install. I found quite a few guides here on notebook review, which one should I follow?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=119587

Lenovo Software
What softwares are actually worth keeping?

From Uninstall or change a program, i see...

Access Help - The information's mostly included in the manual...
Client Security Solution - Not exactly sure what this does. I'm pretty sure I don't want a password manager though.
Help Center - Doesn't seem to contain much useful information besides basics on how to use a PC...
Lenovo Care - Seems useful. But is this just a launcher application?
>Backup now saves an image of my hard drive. Could be useful for use to image my drive right after an install?
>Find Wireless Network is actually pretty nice as it shows what channel the networks in range use as well as strength in %, which is more informative that vista's which only shows network name and bars.
>System Update seems a tiny bit buggy, sometimes updates fail to install, updates showing up again even though I'm supposed to have installed it already... Maybe it would be better for me to download and install updates directly from Lenovo's site?
Lenovo Care Supplement
Lenovo Care System Update
Lenovo Registration - I only need to register once right... So I don't need to install this again.
Maintenance Manager - Seems pretty useless.
Message Center - I'm not quite sure what this is for.
Presentation Director - Seems pretty useless. But if I switch between my CRT monitor (1280x1024) and LCD TV (1360x768) often, does this make changing the resolution easier?
Rescue and Recovery - Is this the same as backup now under Lenovo Care?
ThinkVantage Access Connections - I'd rather use windows to manage my connections...
Synaptic Pointing Device Driver - I probably need this.

HDD Noise
When the Seagate drive is idle, there is a high frequency noise coming from it that's driving me nuts. It sounds kind of like a dot matrix printer except it's nowhere as loud, but since my room is dead quiet, I can hear it very well over the fan going "dooot dooot doot doot dot".

Is my drive defective? Does anyone else's drive do this? Would Lenovo replace the drive just because it sounds funny?

It's annoying but I'm not going to return the laptop over this.

Installing / Removing the battery
The instruction manual tells me to turn off the laptop, unplug everything before removing or installing the battery. Is this actually necessary? Can't I just hot swap it while the power's plugged in?

Also, is there a software I can use to see the battery's stats? Like its health, capacity, number of cycles, and first use date. I looked through the preinstalled softwares but I don't see it.

Receipt?
I ordered this over the phone from the Lenovo Canada Outlet page (for $609 by the way ), but I was not given a receipt of any kind, and the package only included the packing list. Am I supposed to get a receipt? Do I need one should I need to claim American Express' 1 year extended warranty in the future?

Screen brightness...
It resets everytime I close / open the lid or turn on and off the computer (resets to brightest), is there any way to make it not do that?

Bluetooth
I can't seem to find a place to turn off bluetooth without resorting to using the wireless switch on the side of the laptop.
Fn+F5 only shows 802.11 Wireless Radio

I'm sorry about asking so many questions at once. If someone could answer any number of these questions, I would be very grateful. Thanks.

 

First follow this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783
Installing / Removing the battery: Not necessary if ya want to get electrocuted
Receipt?: Ring and find out.
Screen brightness...
Try looking through ur settings and finding the brightness settings then go > apply > ok.
Bluetooth: Is their an option on the computer (like a Icon) were you can open it and turn it off from their.

 

The laptop is only carrying DC power. You can't electrocute yourself.

 

I would still shutdown the laptop and stuff just to be safe. It was more of a joke than being serious -.-

 

HDD noise ...
1. W. Vista is reindexing files regularly, often (haha), so, even if you dont do anything on your ntb personally, it is possible, that system does, so the hdd is active ...
2. download checking utility directly from seagate website, it can run bunch of tests and tell you if your hdd is ok or not

 

Thank you for your replies.

Battery: I think I better do what the instruction manual say. I used to pull the secondary battery off my old T21 (like, swap between DVD rom and 2nd battery) a lot and nothing bad happened, that's probably why I thought maybe it was something ok to do.

Receipt: I think I'll send the sales rep an e-mail. Just seems abnormal to not have a sales receipt.

Bluetooth: I seem to have found a thread that talks about driver / software problems with the 3000 notebooks on lenovo forum. It looks like I have to disable bluetooth through device manager? Ugh.
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=N_Series_Lenovo_3000&thread.id=870

I've downloaded Seatool for windows and it passed 3 tests that I've ran so far. It passed the PC-Doctor's tests too. I'm no longer sure in what situation the drive makes the dot matrix printer like sound. I idled in bios, and booted a windows install disk and the noise is not present.

What I do know is that it's made when the hdd activity light is off and the noise is interrupted when the hdd clicks. And it gets quite loud just before Vista shuts down. *shrug* I'll just try my best to ignore it.