Vista preloaded t60 - what to do first?

Most of the Vista stuff I've read seems to do with loading it onto a notebook that doesn't have it already.

I, OTOH, have a T60 on the way that's coming preloaded w/ Vista. That being the case, are there any steps I should/can take when it arrives to trim its weight down to fighting size? Ideally I'd like a lean, meaning Vista machine ... though I probably don't have the tech savvy to get there if it's too complicated.

I do seem to remember, though, reading somewhere about steps to take right at the initial new-machine start up. am I correct?

And then the next thing I want to do is get rid of the bloatware, mainly the symantic stuff.

But at what point in all this would I want to make boot & rescue and recovery disks? (I'm assuming I should make the boot version, too, right?).

And I'm probably missing some steps here, too. Can anyone help me out?

Thanks!

p.s. i cross posted this to thinkpads.com ; hope no one here minds ...

 

I would start by doing a clean install of Windows (a.k.a format you computer)

 

Dont Activate. Do A Clean Install With Only The Basics U Need/will Need Like Gautam Said. Then Remove As Much As You Can. Delete The Temporary Files For Vista. Then Defragment The Hard Drive. To Speed Up Ure Pc Even More, You Can Plug In A Memory Stick And Use It As 'memory' With Windows Readyboost

 

okay but riddle me this: how do you do a clean install without activating windows?

and where might i find a list of what's not necessary to install w/ a clean install?