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lpinkmountain

Setting up new laptop?

lpinkmountain
14 years ago

I ordered a laptop from Best Buy and it just arrived today. Now I need to "set it up." They were charging $150.00 for that service at the store, and it seemed unnecessary to me. The last time I bought a laptop (6 years ago) I "set it up" myself, but it was just a cheapie one and I didn't use it much to start. Now I'm working from home so it's a whole other ball game, the new laptop is going to need more functioning bells and whistles.

So, what will I need to do? It is running Windows 7. It is a Sony Vios, no blue ray. Last time I just had a dial up, which I would like to set up as a backup, but I now use a cable Internet connection with a wireless router. That was easy to set up with my current system because my brother bought me a wireless card, which I installed, and then bought the wireless router that was recommended on the box for the card. The new computer has its own wireless modem, so I have to get that to interface with the wireless router. I see that as being somewhat of a challenge. I'll also need to install some kind of anti-virus software, I know there are special offers for three companies from Best Buy. I've had Norton and McAfee and was not impressed with either one, but that was due to them causing slowdowns when booting. The choices that will probably come loaded with ads are Web root, Trend Micro and Kaspersky. I also need to set up the firewall? I dunno, I remember doing something with that the last time. And I imagine I'll probably want to remove some kinds of bells and whistles they always put on there that I don't use. I intend to invest in some heavy duty software for this--Adobe Writer, maybe Photoshop or Corel, some kind of Web editing software, and GIS software. I'm debating on the Web editing software, I know Front Page for better or worse, and didn't really like Dreamweaver because of the complex interface. I only know the barest rudiments of html code and no Java script yet except amateur cutting and pasting. That's why I don't really like FrontPage, all that junky MS code.

Anyway, anything else I should consider for setting up my new baby? I use it almost exclusively for work, I'm a biology teacher. I'm going to relegate my old laptop to playing videos.

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