I'm getting a new gaming laptop. What are some must have programs that will improve my all-around experience?

I am fairly new to windows, but I will be buying the Samsung Series 7 gamer NP700G7, but waiting for the version with the 7970m to come out. What are some must have programs that will provide a all around boost for when I do buy it which will hopefully be soon?

I would like to know good programs to get such as the best anti viruses, and just things like that. I will have windows 7 home home premium.

 

For Antivirus i've never had a need for anything more than Microsoft's Security Essentials, it does the job fine and i haven't had an infection since. Other than that i always make sure i have CCleaner (Piriform) & HWMonitor (CPUID) which really are the only things installed on my laptop other than Firefox, uTorrent, Steam, Vent and WoW.

HWMonitor gives you crucial information about your components such as clock rates, temperatures, voltages, and even battery wear levels. CCleaner is for removing junk and keeping your laptop fast by clearing temp files & settings, clearing unused registry entries, organizing startup and it also has a drive wiper.

If you're undecided about a media player, i strongly suggest VLC. It's light and fast, has a tonne of advanced options, has codecs for almost everything and can even play things from archives.

As far as improving your experience, my best advice is use a few light programs, don't bulk your system down with 1000 programs and aps, and disable as much unused stuff as you can (ie. media center or gadget platform if you don't use them). Keep your system light, get an SSD if you can, do regular CCleaner scans and keep drivers updated and it should always be performing great.

 

you can find lots of must have software to monitor your lappy in my sig below.

 

Clean install of Windows 7.

 

Paragon Backup & Recovery 2012 Free (or a similar backup program) ;
' Create an exact copy of your PC including the operating system, applications, user settings and all data.

With such a backup copy/image of your updated OS and programs, you can easily reimage to a clean/fresh state.
Often faster (<20/40min.) than endless scanning with antivirus/malware programs and a guaranteed clean result.
With a separate OS+progs partition, you can keep images relatively small.
The Paragon program also offers a partitioning tool.

 

Some games, is my guess...

 

The less programs you have the better. Your computer will have less resources running, giving your computer the chance to use those resources towards your games.

 

VLC player
Shark007 Codec Pack
Windows Dreamscenes
Stardock (WindowsBlinds, Object Desktop, Deskscapes, Soundpackager,etc)
Rainmeter
Custom 3rd party Windows Themes
RocketDock
mDesktop
VMWare Workstation
TrueCrypt
CoreTemp
SpeedFan
CPUID
CPU-Z
GPU-Z
OpenOfffice/Microsoft Office
Steam
Dropbox
Skype
Fraps
MagicISO/PowerISO
Notepad++
Malwarebytes
uTorrent
WinRAR/7-Zip
Gimp
Blender
PuTTY

That should get you started.

 

uTorrent?! For shaaaaaaame....

I must offer my support for Dropbox though. Especially as a student, Dropbox is essentially a 2GB flash drive for free on any computer that can connect to the Internet.