Getting my first ThnkPad in a couple of days. Anything I should know?

I placed an order for the w520 web special Lenovo has ha for the past few weeks and it should be in my hands within the next couple of days. I was just wondering if there's anything I should know as a new thinkpad owner.

Thanks!

 

1) Creating Recovery Media in Windows 7

2) The factory preload works perfectly fine for most users. Try to be one of those users. It'll save you a lot of time and headaches.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, so, because I have to make the disks, I assume that Lenovo doesn't place a recovery partition onto the drive, so those disks should be the first thing I do?

I wasn't really planning on moving from the factory preload, like you said, I just don't want to deal with the headache of it. Is the preload pretty light in terms of additional software?

 

Lenovo factory does create a recovery partition on the main device (Windows logical drive Q, named Lenovo_Recovery). You can always reset the main drive to initial "factory state" from this partition. It is a good idea to create the recovery discs (usually one boot CD and two data DVDs) in the event the C: drive gets corrupted somehow, or you decide to upgrade to a brand new device.

Personally, I would use Windows 7 SP1 Installation DVD (plus the latest Lenovo drivers and utilities, all available on the Internet) today if I need to "restore" Windows 7 on a ThinkPad purchased, say, a year ago. I don't want to go through the tedious process of applying incremental Windows updates on top of the outdated factory image.

Plug it in, let the battery charge, see what Windows says about your system configuration, check out the LCD, the keyboard, the video, the sound, the optical drive, the WiFi connection, the USB ports... Enjoy your new W520 and welcome to the forum!