new laptop

[poshman]

hi all christmas is coming and santa is dropping off a new laptop for the missus, ive gone for the Toshiba L750 1DR at £400 at J Lewis.

I havent bought a PC for years, will it be easy to set up and get it going Xmas morning or maybe secretly set it up a few days before
cheers PM

 

[enyam]

They are almost idiot proof now,well if I can get one started they must be.If you are unsure ask in the shop for a demo.

 

[poshman]

yep, ok thanks im off to J L now

 

[Monsterminty]

new laptops come with loads of pre loaded crap and sometimes have a lenghy demo to go through, best off to load it up, go through all the "run once" stuff and set it up to connect to your wireless router (if you have one) so on christmas morning its all ready for her to use from when she switches it on.

 

[TheRunningMan]

new laptops come with loads of pre loaded crap and sometimes have a lengthy demo to go through.

MonsterMinty is right. Most laptop manufacturers usually bundle there hardware with free trial periods on software from their preferred partners. Most if not all of the bundled software will be a waste of time. Don't get me wrong, it will work but in the process hog loads of your system memory and make it slower.

If you turn it on and you find Norton or McAfee anti-virus installed then that's the first thing I would be removing and installing something like AVG Free.

Come Christmas, if you are unsure about whether to keep or remove anything and best alternatives then just post back here and we will do our best to steer you in the right direction.

 

[Astra99]

I echo Monsterminty and Crofty's replies. The last new machine I set up at work took me 30 minutes to set up Windows 7 and the rest of the day to get all the bundled stuff (I was going to put rubbish!) off and put on the ones I wanted. A certain antivirus/internet security application refused to uninstall correctly and I had to do it manually with registry hacks, NOT to be attempted unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing.

 

[Monsterminty]

norton removal tool
https://www-secure.symantec.com/nor...file_en_us&product=home&version=1&pvid=f-home

Mcafee removal tool
http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe

the two favorite feathers in my cap (toolkit)

 

[Astra99]

Diolch fawr, (thank you) Monsterminty. I note these are from the manufacturers themselves. Can they really be trusted to completely uninstall their software? Or has twenty-plus years working with PCs and servers made me cynical?

 

[flameport]

Can they really be trusted to completely uninstall their software?

Probably not. I would never buy any computer pre loaded with anything.
Same applies to virus removal stuff - if a computer has a virus or other malware, the only proper solution is to reimage the hard drive. Otherwise, no way to know what could be left behind.

However I would never buy a laptop of any kind either.

 

[Monsterminty]

flameport, that is an argument for a different day, one that has already rocked around this forum a few times. Please read posts carefully

the removal tools were made to facilitate the full removal of the product such as start menu items, temp files, registry keys etc. They can be relied upon to remove ALL files. This is mainly so that if you want to remove Norton/Mcafee then install a newer version you won't have any hiccups from left over files or registry keys etc. It is there to protect Norton/Mcafee's back so to speak.