When my T61 arrives, what do I have to do with it?

I have never owned a laptop before, and i am by no means a computer geek(meant to be a good thing) So what do I have to do with it? I have been reading up on doing a "clean intstall" What is the point of this? Is it necissary? Is it hard to do( the guide I looked at looked fairly complex)? What else do I have to do to my Lenovo? Any help would be great.

 

You don't have to. It is supposed to delete unneeded files, but it is really unnessessary.

 

It depends....I have never done a clean install with it , but I removed the bloatware from my computer- (i.e Picasa, NIS 2007, Office 2007 Trial), and it works perfectly....what are your computer's specifications?

 

my specs are:
T8300 (2.4GHz 800MHz 3MBL2) processor
Vista Home Premium
Currently 1 GB of ram, but upgrading to 3
160GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M (128MB)

 

1) open the box.
2) connect the battery.
3) hook the AC.
4) turn on the computer, enter your name, follow few steps that might show on the screen since this is a new computer.
5) have some fun with it or keep it off till the battery is fully charged. usually new laptops (just like cell phones) come with half charged battery, you must fully charge it.

thats it. ignore everything else you read about fresh install and whatever.

 

btw i ordered mine on Friday, but its not my first laptop. :/

 

I would strongly recommend making a set of recovery discs as soon as possible. It's nice to know that no matter how badly you mess things up doing a clean install, "tweaking," or whatever, you can return it to its original condition.

 

Ok, is the procedure to do this in the clean install thread? It sounds familiar

 

Yes it is, or you can just hit the blue Thinkvantage button and it'll walk you through it. You'll need a CD and 2 DVD's.

 

Dumb question, I know you are suppost to fully charge the battery once you get it. Is it alright to use the laptop while it is plugged in doing this initial charge?

 

The initial charge isn't necessary with the new lithium Ion batteries you can charge it for 5 minutes and unplug it if you like.

A clean install takes everything off of your computer and puts on a shiny new OS but that's it just the OS. It isn't really necessary, it is just used to get rid of bloatware that bogs down your computer. When you get it play with it for a little while if it feels slow then you can do a clean install to speed things up, if it is fine by your standards no need to worry.

 

what if you dont have a DVD recordable?

 

Then the system should have shipped with recovery discs included in the box. If it didn't, I would call tech support ASAP and have them send the discs (it should be free of charge). Those discs are your safety net, I wouldn't make any major changes without them.

 

hey buddy how you doing. you know something thinkpads are really good. and you really dont have do anything. except calibrating the battery. that is all. thinkpad have no ads and it is not bloated. nothing really. thinkpad are great they are not bloated with trial software.

 

do i really need recovery discs if all i want is a clean factory install again? isn't recovery discs only for people who have important things to back up?

 

You don't HAVE to have recovery discs, they're just a really good idea (especially if you're about to undertake a clean install without having done a few). You can also do a recovery from a hidden partition on the hard drive, assuming said partition wasn't accidently deleted during the aforementioned clean install.

Regarding trialware, my T61P came with trial versions of Norton (which I consider a total resource hog) and Windows Office. Since I sent it back after just 2 days, I hadn't had a chance to explore what other unasked-for programs were installed. But I would say there's a fair amount of bloat pre-installed.