Reformatting a brand new laptop?

Is this a good idea? I bought a Toshiba A105 laptop today and it came with a lot of Toshiba programs. It came with XP Home and I was wondering if I should reformat it to Windows XP Pro Corp.

Will I be losing a lot if I reformat or do a lot of people do this? Will there be an increase in perfomance if I reformat? I am used to using a PC so I don't know much about reformatting a laptop. I feel kind of cluttered with all of these Toshiba programs and the other extras.. but are these needed?

I am scared this laptop will not funtion properly if I reformat because I might be losing some Toshiba programs.. so what's the deal?

Thanks

 

You just bought it today! Play with the software already installed, you can always reload it later if you don’t like it. Here’s an advice. Make sure that you received a restore DVD with the laptop. You’ll need it just in case if something is wrong with upgrading to Pro and you have to Toshiba reimage the drive back to defaults.
I also have Satellite A105 and I got the restore DVD with the laptop. I know that one guy complained that he’s missing his restore. So check if you have it.

 

if u are talkin about the recovery disk, then yes i have it.

 

any other opinions, thanks

 

I've done this dozens of times. Just make sure you have that restore disk. I think that you will see a performance increase not to mention reclaiming a lot of disk space.

I always go to the vendor's website and download all the drivers for the laptop and put them on a CD/DVD so you have them when you reload the OS. That way you aren't stuck if the OS can't recognize your network card. That CD then becomes handy in the future, but I tend to recreate it all the time because the drivers keep getting updated.

 

The advantage is you eliminate about 60-80% of all the crap they pre-install. That you will never use anyway. They all (mfg) do this with trial versions, hoping you will buy it once the trial time expires. I think the mfg receive income for preloading software (adware). If it came with Norton, it an opertunity to get rid of it, cleanly. It will definately kill a good system.

 

To be honest, I erased Toshiba preinstalled software and loaded Windows XP Pro 40 minutes later after I bought the laptop. I always do. If you are a beginner, make sure that you know how to load missing drivers and where to find them (on Toshiba website).