Has this laptop been used before?

vertical_fool

Hi all I ordered a PC from PC World after seeing it on the grabbit board, its the 19" samsung laptop. Mines arrived after 4 days in the DHL system, it was even supposedly delivered two days ago, I was given a trace number whilst trying to find out why I hadn't received, then suddenly it showed on their system as back out for delivery!

Anyway it arrived today, it is BIG! I think I like it, its just BIG. It wouldn't switch on at first, it does say to fully charge the battery first somewhere, mine came with an 80 % charge out of the box, I found this strange and suspicious.

When it eventually came on, after removing the charger it setup with windows xp home allowing me set users, keyboard, timezone etc.As it was loading windows it started to load up a trial of Norton Anti virus (some form of Norton Anway), as soon as I saw Norton I said no and closed the program, it stated that doing so would stop Norton being fully installed. When it loaded into windows I was surprised to see a Napster shortcut so I clicked on it which then took me through to what I think was the Napster download/control panel, I closed this.

After this I started to look for signs of use on the laptop, I couldn`t see any so I peeled off the screen protector, under this there were greasey finger marks and what may be slight blemishes on the screen, possibly light scratches.

I then decided to look through the control panel in add/remove programs. I found that all of the software was said to be last used on the 26, 27 or 28th of October last year.

Here is the software that was loaded:

Last used 26/10/05

Recover Pro

Last used 27/10/05

Adobe Reader 7.0
AVStation_Premium
Display manager
EASYBOX
LiveReg (Symantec Corp)
Norton Antivirus 2005 (Symantec Corp)
Power DVD
Samsung battery Manager
Samsung network manager 2.0
Samsung update Plus
Synaptics Pointing Device Driver

Last used 28/10/05

Samsung Theme

I think all these were said to be used rarely.

Then there was Napster, used occasionally, last used on 13/10/06

There were also other programs that didn't have a last used date. These were:

Cyprus USB Mass Storage Driver Installation *
High Definition Audio Driver Package - KB888111
Intel(R) PROSet/Wireless Software *
J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0
Live update 2.5 (Symantec Corporation)
Magic Keyboard
MSXML 4.0 SP2 Parser and SDK
NVIDEA DRIVERS *
Samsung Smart Screen
SENS LT56ADW Modem *
SoundMAX
USB Storage Adaptor FX (SMI) *
User's Guide *
WOW XT and TSXT Filter Driver

The files with the * were said to be used rarely.

So.

Do you think this has been used before and is therefore reconditioned or second user?

Is there a better way for me ascertain this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Vertical

Zahc

You could start ie and check out the history. I don't know if napster is bundled now a days, but it does seem strange.

Zahc

towseriv

Then there was Napster, used occasionally, last used on 13/10/06

You mean they managbed to use it in the future?

vertical_fool

I clicked on when I opened it up, it is saying that its around 14.30 on the 13/10/06

I also forgot to mention that its not connected to the net. Although I think IE will just display page not found type page but still allow me to look into the history, so I`ll do this when I get back to it.

justpaper

http://officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

have go with that see what u find.

or if u really want too get inside it.. try ..
http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html



as for the lap being too big,. if its got a 19" display is going too be Big,. give it back and get a 13"

and have u thought about getting a mac powerbook ?

vertical_fool

Was Napster bundled on nnew PC`s at some point? Maybe in October last year?

If its been restored using a restore disk (which I assume is a backup of the initiaal factory startup) would this reload Napster?

If it has been restored this way then wouldn't that also remove IE history?

I also forgot to mention that my documents and my music is empty.

Vertical

Zahc

vertical_fool wrote:

I clicked on when I opened it up, it is saying that its around 14.30 on the 13/10/06

I also forgot to mention that its not connected to the net. Although I think IE will just display page not found type page but still allow me to look into the history, so I`ll do this when I get back to it.

Looking at the cookies will give you an idea then, if you haven't been on the net anything there is a result of previous use.

Zahc

vertical_fool

I`ll have to wait till the weekend to look use the links as the first one requires a flash drive, mines at home so I won`t be able to get it till the weekend. I`ll look into them then.

Thanks

Vertical

vertical_fool

I`ll look at the cookies as soon as I get back to the laptop. Thanks

By the way, when you reformat a drive does it not delete the information, does it just prepare the drive to be fully written to?

Why don`t I get rid of the 19". I was looking at getting a 17", I was dithering over which one to buy. This came up, it needed to be a quick decision, there were no 19" alterenatives, so I jumped in. I also like the idea of a 19" laptop.

Thanks

Vertical

Zahc

By the way, when you reformat a drive does it not delete the information, does it just prepare the drive to be fully written to?

Sets up the drive to be written to. Putting, say, xp onto it after formatting will overwrite some of the data, but not all. This means old data can be recovered using the right tools.

Zahc

nearlyrich

I can't help thinking 19" is far too big for a notebook! It's going to be heavy, not very good on battery etc my 13.3" screen is plenty big enough.