What to do AFTER purchasing a notebook

Well, earlier today I purchased my E1705 Dell Inspiron for just under 2,000 dollars. Now First question is does anyone actually receive the laptop within a few days, or do I actually have to wait a week or up to 10 days.

Also, I read some things that there's LOTS of preinstalled softeware which is unneccessary, and I heard there's a way to reorganize it and configure it so I get rid of that junk and free up a lot of extra space. Does anyone know what I can do for this and what can be done.

And finally, is it possible to somehow obtain a Complete Restore disk. It's a disk which I should be able to put in my cd rom drive and do a complete restore and delete all the files I have on it to make it how I had when I first purchased it. Reason I may want this is because if my computer ever got REALLY messed up, I'd like to use this on it and save my files to some RW discs or something and fix my computer.

Hope I can get help, thanks.

 

I had to wait 2 weeks for mine becuase the wireless card was out of stock, but you should have it in a little while. All the pre-installed software is there, and you will have to either do what I did, which was to go to add/remove programs and delete them, or do an OS install. I would say to do the OS install after you make the recovery disc, and keep in mind that you can only make one, so use good quality media and keep it in a secure place. Dell only lets you make ONE, so don't lose/break/damage it. I would say to do the add/remove programs to get rid of the programs. I would try the software out first unless you have a better program, like I had HP Photo center on mine, but I used a copy of Photoshop 7.0.

 

The first thing you should do is uninstall all the bloatware that comes pre-installed, specially trial versions of programs, but be careful you don't want to uninstall certain utilities needed to run your laptop like power managers, etc. About the restore disk, usually what you get is a restore partition on your hard drive.

 

Format + install a copy of XP which has been heavily customised with nLite + find the limits of undervolting and underclocking the CPU/video card.

 

love't or leave't.

 

On making the backup CD (more a Dell question I guess) Can you make an ISO copy of the backup you make? I did that with my Acer Backup DVD, backed up to DVD then made ISO image of that backup so I can make another anytime I need (or in case the disc gets scratched or whatever).

 

What, pray tell, is nLite+?

I'm a n00b here, so be gentle... (I'm just a n00b to these forums, get techie on me if ya need to)

 

You might want to read this guide on re-installing Windows XP on Dell notebooks.

 

jetstar- was that directed at me? I didn't find anything about it there...

 

It's a very nice tool that You can use to customize Your Windows XP installation. You can add as well as remove things You need. So You can put extra programs that will install with it, you can set that You won't need to put serial into (although U will still need to put it into during the creating process).
Basicly it allows You to create an XP installation disk where U will set it up as U want.

Google for it.

I preffer to do 2 things like this. One is Norton Ghost backup that I can easily reapply to my system and second one nLite customized Windows setup disk.

 

Try this link http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787&highlight=optimization or search this forum for optimiation...

 

"Let's test Far Cry on this thing "