Brand New Computer - What do i do!!!

adr0ck

Bought a brand new computer from dell

its on windows xp pro

anyone recommend first things i do to it straight away

things i'm thinking of:

firefox
avg antivirus
avg anti spyware

paint.net
windows xp powertoy (resize pictures)

obviously drivers for my scanner and printer

anyone any thoughts?

thanks

Hussein_

if you can make an image of the system after you have installed all the software it will save you a lot of hassle if you ever need to reinstall/format win xp..the image will contain all the software that you have added to your pc...meaning when you format your pc say in a years time...all you need to do is apply the image on it and no need to install the extra applications as they will be part of the image...hmm now that i have typed all this, it actually sounds quite tedious...:-)

Chippy_Minton

It will probably already have antivirus software, so no need for another, at least not yet. Maybe a firewall too - can you post a link to the specs.

See this free essential software thread - http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1162826527,35939,

johnmc

Office software.

Open Office is free and has a lot of fans on here.

sra

Spybot S+D
As well as looking for nasties, it has a startup manager so you can stop a lot of the free trial stuff starting up.
(Even if you decide to keep the free trial stuff, you probably don't want it running all the time)

bat999

Hi
There's a link to a decrapifier in this thread:-http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=464088
For when you decide which to keep and which to bin.

adr0ck

thanks for the replies

just realised my new computer doesn't have a printer port (when did they stop doing them?)

anyways i know you can get a usb to parrallel printer port cable thing but does anyone know if you can just get an adapter that uses your old cable - my cables really long - printer sits about 8 m away

thanks

Little_John

adr0ck wrote: »

anyways i know you can get a usb to parrallel printer port cable thing but does anyone know if you can just get an adapter that uses your old cable - my cables really long - printer sits about 8 m away

thanks

Dell havnt completly stoped putting them on, it is mainly on the more inexpensive models. I installed a 521/520 I cant remember and it didnt have one this week, but some of the higher end ones like optiplex well the last one I installed a few month ago still had one.

and you said you know you can buy USB to Parallel adaptors so just buy one that is the only way to connect a parallel cable to a usb port plug the usb in to the pc the long cable you have in to the adaptor and leave the other end in the printer try this one £4ish on ebay

Make sure you dont buy a usb to centronics that will replace your printer cable, you need one like I linked to. your other option is to buy a parallel port card but dell also sometimes dont put PCI slots in their newer machines also and they are usually more expensive that that I posted earlier.

adr0ck

thanks little john

i'd actually seen that on ebay.....but thought it wasn't long enough.......i've only realised that its to connect onto my existing printer cable after you described it as such......doh

thanks

lforster

New computer? Free software.

Firefox, 7-zip archiver, Spybot S&D, AVG Antivirus, Ashampoo firewall, OpenOffice.org, Filezilla FTP client, XviD codec, Foxit PDF reader, CD BurnerXP Pro 3 (see below though.)

BTW Ashampoo CD/DVD burning suite 6.5 is free at the moment from their site so check it out - it's only until the 21st of June. It's an alternative to Nero.

Edit: Go here to get it: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ashampoo65/index

BenL

Make sure you have got some A/V and firewall software on before going near the internet.

The windows on-line activation process is littered with problems that hackers etc use.

After your a bit safer pick up all the windows update fixes.

Hopefully your pc will have SP2 already on it so there won't be that many large files to download.

Ben