What to do when I get my MacBook, I mean like battery and......

I have a few questions, I have been told that I should Calibrate my battery when I get it, and also go over my system to make sure nothing is wrong. My question is what exactly should I do to my MacBook to make sure it works for a long time, and to absolutly make sure everything is working properly. I mean everything, how do I test every single componet to make sure there all working the way they should?

EDIT:
Also what does calibrate my battery mean and roughly how do I do it.

 

what? i keep hearing mac is SO much better than windows... i just start using my windows computers, no calibrating, no system checks nothing .

i have not had any probems...

or is this calibrating\system checks, just a mac thing?

 

The calibrating the battery I heard just helps, not nessasary, and the checking for problems is just also a precaution. I check the system from top to bottom on Windows PCs, but this is my first Mac so I dont know how to check the system or anything. BTW I have found Windows Computers to be VERY glitchy and VERY much full of errors! Im just trying to mix it up is all.

 

instructions on how to calibrate the battery are listed in the manual that comes with your notebook.

to check the system, run a hardware test and test your optical drive, usb ports, etc. to make sure everything works. other ppl might have some other suggestions for you.

 

How do I do a Complete Hardware test on the Mac OS? I have never used it before.

 

Here are the instructions you need for using Apple Hardware Test:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303081

 

The calibrating has to do with calibrating the battery - this isn't necessarily a bad thing to do with any laptop, so I don't see it as being just a Mac thing.

You don't have to run a Hardware Test with a Mac (Apple primarily provides the Hardware Test capability just so that you do have some diagnostic tools you can run to help rule out hardware problems if you're having any difficulty), although it isn't a bad idea to run one when you get your computer, since it could conceivably pick up a hardware problem that you otherwise might notice, and give you plenty of time to get it taken care of or fixed or replaced or whatever.

Again, this doesn't have anything to do with whether Macs are better than PCs or vice versa....... I've run hardware tests, etc. on my PC as well (most commonly memory tests).

Really, most of this is hardware stuff..... doesn't have much at all to do with whatever Mac OS X vs. Vista thing you were implying (I sort of picked up on this from the tone of your first sentence in particular, but if that is a mistake, I apologize).

-Zadillo

 

Thanks for the link Zadillo!

 

thanks for the great ideas!