New Laptop User Advice?

I just bought my new Laptop HP Pavilion with the following specs.





2.2 Intel Dual Core2


2 GB DDR2 memory


250GB Hardisk


128MB -nVidia Gforce 8400


Vista Home Premium





This was the advice of my friends with the budget i have.





Now my question to the laptop experts because i am a new laptop user.





1. What else i need to know in my new laptop?


2. Laptop user maintenance strategy?


3. Security?


4. Hardware care?


5. General tips and advice





I am sure you have encountered some problems in using laptop maybe you can inform me so that i amy able to avoid it if not i have an idea to solve it.





Thank you much..New Laptop User Advice?
First downgrade to Windows XP because Vista just eats system rsources and slows down your computer. 2nd mkae sure you have some kind of anti-virus/spyware software. Usually new computers come with one year of Norton Anti-Virus or MacAffee, but after that there are a lot good free ones on the internet. Just treat it with care and it will last a long time. I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 that has lasted me for 5 1/2 years and is still running strong.New Laptop User Advice?
If you have a desktop its the same thing except in another form.





Enjoy!





- The Answer Man.
1. What else i need to know in my new laptop?


Answer: There isn't a lot you need to know, but If you go traveling with it, make sure you buy a back up battery or bring the power cord.


2. Laptop user maintenance strategy?


Dust off the screen, It gets annoying with dust and fingerprints on it, Don't let food crumbs get between the keys...


3. Security?


Install a Antivirus (AVG-Free is good if you don't wanna pay)


Don't turn off windows Firewall


Don't download pron.


4. Hardware care?


Don't drop it, get a case if traveling


5. General tips and advice


Treat it like its your child.








Edit, There is nothing wrong with Vista, I will repeat it, NOTHING WRONG WITH VISTA, Just keep it, No point downgrading, you will just have to upgrade again within the next 2 years, losing more important Information.
I think you got a great laptop and now you just need to get some security software on it to keep it running good. I suggest Trend micro PC cillin (anti virus only,not the whole Internet security suite since you already have windows firewall and i assume you have a router also) and for spyware protection I would use webroot spy sweeper. This is the best protection I have seen on the market so far. As for care of the unit. Do not clean the screen with ammonia based products,keep the fan port blown out to get good air circulation (just use a can of air from time to time), and stay off them porn sites :)
dont let moisture run down the screen as electric connections are in the plastic.





Partition the Hard drive 鈥?reasons


========================


Firstly C drive is compulsory for the Operating System (XP) (Vista), and you install all your programs on C drive.





D drive is made for YOUR files.





What you do is MOVE my documents to D drive.





When you download music, videos, pictures from your camera or make any MS Office documents or save emails, you save it on D drive.





The reason for this is to do with


1. Hard drive failure - usually a failed hard drive will not boot, but can often be seen when hooked up as a slave.


So when you get your new hard drive up and running, you can copy D drive from your old to your new. You haven鈥檛 lost anything.





2. Virus. Normally virus are programmed to infect C drive. If you get a bad virus all that has to be done is format the C drive partition then re install you OS and programs from disks.


You haven鈥檛 lost your personal stuff because its on D drive.





3. Scanning your C drive for virus or spyware. These malware programs live on C drive. It is not necessary to scan D drive. It is a lot quicker to scan a small partition than a large hard drive.








Now you can see the above is compromised by the fact that programs get updates and lots of programs are installed from the net. Therefore if you had to wipe out C drive it be hard to get it back to how it was.


To remedy this we use Norton Ghost to image C drive and store the Image on D drive.


(Vista requires a version 10 or newer of Ghost).





If you get a bad virus you just use the Ghost disk to boot up on, then copy the image stored on D drive back over C drive.


It takes less than 30 mins to rebuild C drive.


Also you may have this running on say a 250 gig HDD, and it fails. You buy a new 400 gig HDD and install both into you computer, the failed one as a slave.


Using the ghost disk to boot up on, you partition the 400 C drive to 30 gig (XP)and the remaining to D drive. Then you repack C drive from the image. Then Copy your old D drive files to your new one. In a time of less than 1 hour and it鈥檚 all running. The image loads all the drivers, OS everything.





Then you update new images of C drive every few months so that the one stored on D drive is not to far out of date.








On XP and Vista you create C drive to a maximum of (XP 30 gig, Vista 40 Gig) It doesn鈥檛 need to be any bigger, so don鈥檛 make C drive to big as you will not use it.








Also while your computer is in good nick you should download and install superantispyware because when malware gets going you will not be able to access the net.








Clean Up Computer


===============


Download and run superantispyware. I was put onto this program because of an annoying popup (XP or Vista plus all OS preceding)





http://www.superantispyware.com


Superantispyware is a good program and remember to update it before scanning. A scan may take 45mins.





Note Superantispyware has powerful reset tools that will set stuff back to windows defaults.


To use these tools click preferences %26gt;repairs. This may be handy to reset IE URLS if you have annoying pop ups.





Also set up tick boxes that you want in the other tabs as you require.





afterwards clean up the registry with this


Clean up pc and IE


==============


To clean up run this Microsoft鈥檚 windows live program. It does registry, spyware , virus , disk clean up and defrag





XP Users http://onecare.live.com/site/en-ca/defau鈥?/a>


http://onecare.live.com/site/en-au/defau鈥?/a>





Vista Users http://onecare.live.com/site/en-ca/cente鈥?/a>





Run the full safety scanner, it takes a few seconds to install the scanning files but when you start the scan, it takes 2 hours or more. So once it starts to load x file of x you can leave the computer and go to bed etc.





Then at the end of the scan it asks you to set it running full time.





Think twice about setting it to run in the background as it could be another thing to slow you down. However, it may be worth while if you have no other security programs running.





Consider the following options:


I personally run Norton 360 which is full internet security and run superantispyware when I want to.





So if you don鈥檛 have a decent internet security program then perhaps run the superantispyware with your antivirus in the background.





If you sick of antivirus programs that don鈥檛 work perhaps run onecare full time and run superantispyware whenever.





Now you should be flying and Onecare has even set up a new system restore point for you.





Note onecare does other stuff as well. Click on the menus on the LHS column.





add onecare to your favourites





Also


Over time IE7 seems to set its own (or programs do) tick boxes in the advance tab.


In IE7 (IE6) Tools %26gt;Internet Options %26gt;Advance Tab


Click Restore advance settings defaults


Tick empty temp files when browser closes (this empties the cache)


Bullet disable phishing filter (IE7)


Delete Browser History, cookies the whole lot regularly.


Close the browser to set the settings.





Optional speed fix


=============


If you want IE7 to speed up and work like IE6 then do this (you can undo it later)


Click tools %26gt;manage add ons %26gt; enable /disable %26gt;select each add on and bullet the disable button


Close the browser to set the settings