Im going to get my new SatelliteA205 and I have some questions.

I am an XP guy, but I may be able to accept Vista considering this laptop is for internet and media and email mainly. I know buying a new XP and fidning the drivers is a pain.

That being said, I like my computers to run fast, so is there any issue I should know about when it comes to removing all the bloatware?

Also, I would like to know what free and light firewall I can use with Vista? I have used the free Kerio light for ever...it is a very small and extremely effecient firewall that takes barely any resources..I wonder if it will work with Vista.

As for Virus protection I wonder the same.

This is my first notebook. I will use it for around the house browsing, and watching movies and maybe on some trips, so any good tips for battery conservation and anything I should know regarding this computer would be GREAT.

 

Check out the thread here if you are thinking of downgrading - its not really a pain considering the very gratifying results.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=175655&page=3

Some great tips for extending the life of the battery are here:
http://www.friedbeef.com/2007/07/01/top-15-ways-to-extend-your-laptop-battery-life/

And when you get it from the store/online, after charging it, let it discharge **completely** once before doing anything else and then charge. Its a way of making the battery realize its potential early in the game.

 

When you say this, do you mean I should not use it all and just let it discharge? Or can I use it while it completely discharges, let it die, then recharge again?

Also, I may end up going back to XP, but I am open minded to Vista. I would have to buy a new copy of XP because I don't think can keep reinstalling my XP disc on a new computer can I?

Just for the sake of detail, the a205 model is an S5812. I'm pumped to have a dual core on a laptop..that's fantastic power!

 

If you're not gonna game, I'd jsut stay with Vista since eventially, we all will be using it as soon as the high end media apps catch up.

It can be tuned but need to read on some tweaks to smooth out and scale down so its not such a resorce hog. Depending on the model, you can easily downgrade to XP or better yet go for XP x64 for better performance with more RAM later.

What varient of the A205 were you looking into?

 

Word of warning, there is a ton of crapware in Toshiba notebooks. Restore CD wont help so you will need to uninstall each software separately. As long as you don't touch anything with Toshiba branding (i.e. Toshiba Button support) you should be able to clean it all up. Run CCleaner or any other registry cleaner to wipe out any remnants of the old programs, then tweak it using the guide posted in the windows OS forum (Winbubble is an excellent app to consider). Finish with a defrag of the boot and OS sector and you should be good to go.

Vista has some excellent power options to tweak around with. I easily get 5 hours on a 6cell battery on notetaking with msword. Surfing I get around 3.4 hours. This is all with the original 6 cell battery!

No, unless you have batteries from two years ago, this is a completely unnecessary step.

 

Great points..I uninstalled the crapware, which made a huge difference, but I need to grab CCleaner and finish the job. I plan to use Open Office instead of word, so I deleted that stupid 60 day trial thing.

I also found that thread on Vista tweaks, and I am going to definitley dig into that when I get home. Then ill make a system restore point and keep that as my only restore point.

I may have deleted some Toshiba branded stuff..I have to check and see..i played it pretty safe though. I had a browser running last night with a bunch of intense graphics and the computer was at 18% resources...so needless to say I am loving this laptop right now.