just bought a notebook, need some advice ...

Helloooooooo
well i recently purchased a dell inspiron 1520 and it should be here any day now. what i would like some advice on is what to do immediately when i get it.

im aware some crapware might be on the system so should i clear the hard drive and do a fresh install????

i'm really not sure what to do.

give me any and all suggestions... especially maybe some programs to install first to make my life easier.

thanks

 

Surprisingly, the dell systems don't come with too much bloat. Basically the things you might want to remove are:

Google Desktop
All the Roxio Crap they add (About 9 different Programs)
The Webcam Avatar crap (Over 200mb install)
The rest is mainly dell support software.

if you format, you will lose the recovery partition used when you re-install vista. i didn't format this machine when i got it, I just tweaked the hell out of it.

You will gain some HD space from formatting, but you won't really gain any noticeable performance, From my experiences anyway.

As for software, well, providing you don't format, Run a registry cleaner after you've uninstalled all the the things you don't want and the bloat.

Also, get all the newest drivers for the system. make sure you get the newest video drivers first off. And don't check the dell site for drivers, there always out-dated. the synaptics touchpad drivers is a good update as well. Also, there is a great vista tweaking thread you should look at.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

 

A clean install can take a bit of time. I personally prefer it. If you don't want to invest that much time, you could go in and remove any programs you don't want. Then just see how it goes. You can use CCleaner to see what is turning on with Windows which is generally the stuff that mucks things up.

Check the software forum for tips and tricks for maximizing performance.

 

ZaZ, you've opened a way to ask a question (sorry if this is a threadjack tymonc, but you probably will appreciate the answers too) I've been wondering about.

if you back up the install image that is provided on your HDD (I have an Acer 5920-6273) and then remove the partitions (my 250GB is partitioned into 100/150) and put it into a single 250GB, what kind of effect would that have if I ever wanted to restore the original Acer image?

I'm getting all the drivers off the website and a friend created a Vista Home Premium OEM image from a disc of his own, so I can do a fresh install. I'm just not sure if I wish to risk causing any snafu or fubar...

 

I don't know a lot about Acers recover partitions since I haven't used on extensively in a while. You can use True Image or Ghost to make a back up image of the drive. Does Acer give you recovery discs? If you have a Seagate drive, you can get a free download of Disc Wizard which is essentially True Image in all but name.

 

I'm fortunate that the laptop's onboard software actually came with a specialized backup utility, that can make an original image and/or create a current image. besides that, I have Acronis True Image 10 (sweet deal for $30 about 6 months ago), which would easily do the backup for me, like you mentioned.

I have external drives to store my mission critical files on...so I'd rather have a single 250GB HDD then anything else...tho I am thinking of popping a nice 7200rpm 2.5IN in. any recommendations on that?

 

Hitachi 7k200 supposedly performs a bit better. I bought mine which is a re-branded Dell Seagate because it cost way less than the 7k200. Real world performance probably isn't all that different.

 

I take it, by the mention of real world performance difference, you mean between the Seagate and the Hitachi. any word on which one is more noisy? I'd prefer silence if possible...

 

hey tymonc, to bring this thread a bit back on topic, some programs I find indispensable are:

HijackThis - now available from Trend Micro
http://www.download.com/3000-8022_4-10781312.html

CCleaner - this cleans up crap and has a tab that lets you do a registry scan that won't remove anything critical that could brick your current installation of WIndows www.ccleaner.com

Spybot Search & Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

I used to use AdAware, but I find the free version so buggy, I've stopped using it currently.

if you're going to use wifi a lot, especially in public places, I'd recommend you buy a full internet security suite...Norton 2008 is good, but a resource hog, so I would suggest you look more at Kaspersky or Bit Defender, who score higher in detection and removal of most malware...they scored lower then Norton because they don't scan quite as fast. Bit Defender also has a 3 license 2 year deal out, very sweet, good price...I think it wins.

I'm a fan of Lavalys Everest Home...but I'm finding it's aging so fast that it's beginning to not read some things on the newer PC's. there's now something out called PC Wizard 2008, which is very similar. http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php

VLC (VideoLAN) is an excellent all-around media player. it can do almost everything you throw at it, except HD content it seems, so no HD DVD or Blu Ray. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

I also love to use WinRAR from www.rarlabs.com, tho some like some other programs, like 7-Zip, which is free, whereas WinRAR is sorta an unlimited DEMO that says buy me ever ytime you use it, if you haven't purchased a license yet. anyhow, I like how easy it is to navigate.

last (but not least) is a simple image resizer you can use via the file menu. once installed, just right click the image and select VSO Image Resizer and you can resize an image without having to open some gangly program.
http://www.vso-software.fr/products/image_resizer/

 

alright that sounds like a good idea. and yeah lol video drivers first everytime
thanks

Yeah i currently use CCleaner on my computer now and i love it. I'll definitely install it on my new comp.

haha its alright. its wasnt really a "threadjack" anyway. i found the answers useful anyway

but yeah thanks for listing all those programs. ill be sure to check each one of them out. WinRAR is great though haha i currently use it also. i also use VLC on my imac g5 and its amazing too so it sounds like you know what your talking about.

thanks