Just received my new Dell Vostro 1500, some questions regarding Vista

I just got my new laptop in the mail today. Very exciting!! (especially considering it came 3 days early?!) Its a Dell Vostro 1500. I was planning on reformatting when I received it, but it doesn't really seem to have too much bloatware on it. Maybe I'm not entirely understanding what bloatware is... . I know since this is a business class notebook that they don't load it up with some of the stuff they normally do. Do you recommend doing a fresh install regardless, or can I get away with just deleting some of this fluff and jumping right into tweaking Vista?

I plan on doing the Vista tweaks that are in the sticky. Are there any good quick guides on using some of the more hidden features of vista? I tried reading one that was in the 250 page range, but I'd like something a bit more concise.

Also, if I do do a fresh install of Vista, should I make parition the hard drive? I read that if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. I have a 160 gb hard drive. If I do decide to do that, what would be the logical way to parition a hard drive of that size? Advantages/Disadvantages? Thanks in advance!

 

It's better if you do a clean install, esp if you don't need all that bloatware they add..

you can check this one out,it's plain and simple and not that long..
VistaPower

It's better if you create a partition for your OS and other(s) for your data, in case you need to do a clean install again, you wouldn't lose all your data then

 

Dell doesn't put very much bloatware on its machines if you select the no software options when configuring it, e.g. "No security software", "No Music & Photo software", "No ISP", etc. The only things on my Latitude that I would call bloatware were a couple Google programs (desktop search & sidebar). I just uninstalled them.

So, you can reinstall Windows if you like, but I wouldn't expect to see a big difference.

Be careful with the tweaks... it's a good collection of tweaks, but some of them turn off actual useful features (such as desktop search and some security stuff). Make sure you understand what everything does before doing the tweaks. Actually, I would run my computer a couple weeks before trying any of the tweaks... just so you get used to the way things are supposed to work.