first things to do with a new laptop?

[harry clemance]

apart from creating a recovery disk and getting rid of all the rubbish pre loaded on the computer are there any other sugestions on what i should download or do to my laptop? also for future upgrading would i be able to change the prossecer on a xps l502x?

 

[DaveSi677]

firefox, change memory cache size, do all updates... then it depends what you do with your pc get what you need to make it work best for you..

 

[harry clemance]

What do you mean change memory cache size? What advantage is there of doing this? And how do you do it?

 

[DaveSi677]

To do it...

Right click My Computer and go to properties. Then click on advanced system setting. Go to the Advanced tab and click settings in the Performance section. Once in settings go into Advanced. You will see a section called Virtual Memory click change.
From there you might have to click on custom page file. Once you do that put the recommended amount (you will see it at the bottom) put in both available slots: Minimum and Maximum. Click ok and exit. Might ask for a restart also...


What this does is that it gives more virtual memory which it takes from your HDD. This will help your computer to run a little quicker!

 

[claptonman]

If you have more than 4 GB of RAM, that is rather pointless, you are gonna get great speeds with the "system managed" size.

Have a look at this guide:

http://www.computerforum.com/188636-how-speed-up-windows.html

Then change everything to what you like. I changed my taskbar from the fat taskbar to the more traditional size, and changed it so same programs won't group together. (I'm assuming you have 7...)

Just change settings until you have what you like.

 

[harry clemance]

Oh my specs are*
I7-2630
750GB (7200RPM)
8GB (1333, dual channel)
NVIDIA GFORCE GT 540M (2GB, DDR5)
1080p screen
DVD player
WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM*

 

[flanker]

Oh my specs are*
I7-2630
750GB (7200RPM)
8GB (1333, dual channel)
NVIDIA GFORCE GT 540M (2GB, DDR5)
1080p screen
DVD player
WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM*

Your system is ready for action, load your software and get going.

 

[strollin]

... What this does is that it gives more virtual memory which it takes from your HDD. This will help your computer to run a little quicker!

TNSTAAFL!

Using Virtual Memory will NEVER speed your system up since Virtual Memory is HDD based so it's many times slower than system RAM. Virtual Memory allows you to use more memory than you have physical RAM so it's a compromise, you can load more stuff into memory at the cost of performance. If you find your system needs lots of Virtual Memory it's an indication you need to add more RAM.