New Laptop: Best setup advice

Cookie_Monster

HI,

Just picked up a new laptop. It's a Toshiba Satellite P70-B097 running i7 4720HQ, 4GB Radeon R9 M265X and 16GB ram

Just wondering what are the first steps to getting the best out of it, moving from a 7 year old inspiron so want to make the most of it :pac:

It's running win 8.1 which has already downloaded all sorts of ****e, forgot to turn off the updates before it did them. removed some of the more useless included programmes as well.

Also updated several of the drivers so far and most importantly got rid of IE
Anything else> THe sticky of free software etc is pretty old at this stage, is it still relevant of is there better options out there?

It's main use is gaming and general internet browsing really, not much else and I'm not the most au fait with tech so the simpler the better

Lu Tze

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

HI,

Just picked up a new laptop. It's a Toshiba Satellite P70-B097 running i7 4720HQ, 4GB Radeon R9 M265X and 16GB ram

Just wondering what are the first steps to getting the best out of it, moving from a 7 year old inspiron so want to make the most of it :pac:

It's running win 8.1 which has already downloaded all sorts of ****e, forgot to turn off the updates before it did them. removed some of the more useless included programmes as well.

Also updated several of the drivers so far and most importantly got rid of IE
Anything else> THe sticky of free software etc is pretty old at this stage, is it still relevant of is there better options out there?

It's main use is gaming and general internet browsing really, not much else and I'm not the most au fait with tech so the simpler the better

Have a look on the ninite website, all kinds of useful stuff (photo,pdf printers, security, music, video etc software) you can tick the things you want, and it will give you an all in one installer for everything you ticked, while opting out of the bundled free toolbars and crapware etc that come bundled with a lot of installers nowadays.

yoyo

Lu Tze wrote: »

Have a look on the ninite website, all kinds of useful stuff (photo,pdf printers, security, music, video etc software) you can tick the things you want, and it will give you an all in one installer for everything you ticked, while opting out of the bundled free toolbars and crapware etc that come bundled with a lot of installers nowadays.

www.ninite.com is great alright. Great for updating your applications all in one go as well!

Nick

unkel

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Just wondering what are the first steps to getting the best out of it

There's only one way to get the best out of it. Wipe and reinstall Windows 8.1 from a Microsoft ISO (not from Toshiba media). Bloatware all gone!

IE isn't as bad as it used to be either

mass_debater

Download decrapifyer and remove all the rubbish software then use ninite to install the ones you want

Cookie_Monster

unkel wrote: »

There's only one way to get the best out of it. Wipe and reinstall Windows 8.1 from a Microsoft ISO (not from Toshiba media). Bloatware all gone!

sounds a bit scary tbh,is it actually easy to do?
just follow the steps as here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media
does this remove the toshiba install as part of the re-install?

unkel wrote: »

IE isn't as bad as it used to be either

I flatly refuse to believe that :pac:

anyway Firefox seems to be the only browser that support the garmin connector plugin these days, and thats super important.

unkel

Yeah, that's it. It will keep the Toshiba recovery partition unless you actively seek out to wipe it during the install. To play safe, follow the Toshiba instructions to create Toshiba install media, so if everything goes wrong, there's still a path back to the way you got the laptop when it was brand new (I would do this anyway, whatever you decide to do - you might not have this option at a later stage - should your hard disk fail for example)

Or be even braver and install Windows 10 Pro (Insider Preview) - this is not the full final version but it is working very well.

Or be less brave / more safe and install decrapifyer like mass_debater suggested

Anyway good luck and keep us posted!

Cookie_Monster

Ran decrapifier and it found nothing worth removing apart from maybe the Norton backup. I guess I got most of the rubbish myself.
Not quite prepared to wipe and re-install ISO 8 but will have a look at windows 10 over the weekend see if that would be worth it.

Thanks all.