For many of us, buying the laptop of your dream is not just owning another new electric device. No matter if you’re a student or a professional, a laptop is the mean of your work, study, entertainment, communication, and what not! So, you should know these things to do when you get a new laptop.
So, right after you’ve got your new laptop in hands, don’t rush to open it up and start your favorite program online. Give yourself a few minutes to do the basic tasks that every new laptop owner should do with his/her laptop.
Buying A New Laptop?
Now, what are those tasks that we’re pointing at? Well, as it’s not just a to-do list, we want it to explain in details to you. And that’s the purpose of crafting this whole post up.
Take some time, sit back and go through the whole article on things to know when you get a new laptop-
6 Things to do when you get a new laptop
Here are the 6 actions that we want you to do with your laptop right after you’ve bought it newly. Let’s start-
1. Check out the OS
Although there are some vendors that provide you with the latest OS installed and licensed in the laptops they sell. But that’s not all the time. Sometimes, your laptop doesn’t come with the latest version of Windows, MacOS or Linux operating system. Also, there are new to newer security patches that should be kept up to date.
To make that sure, go through the following steps-
- Press and hold the ‘window’ key and then press ‘I’. It will open the Settings options.
- Click on ‘Update and Security’, and then click on ‘Windows Update’.
- If there is an updated version of the Windows operating system available, it will appear in the right sidebar.
- If you find any better and more recent version of your current Windows operating system, click on ‘Install Now’ option and proceed accordingly.
The same kind of operations can be conducted in other operating systems like MacOS, Linux, etc (we have also some laptops for linux system). But the sequence of commands might be a little different.
2. Take the bloatware off
Bloatware is a generalized term for the preloaded software on your laptop, that often come with the OS that your vendor had installed into it. As a user, you have hardly any necessity for this software. And that’s why you need to uninstall them right away.
So, there are two methods to uninstall the bloatware. One is to go to Control Panel> Programs and Features and identify the bloatware software one by one. If you find any suspicious software that you don’t need at all, investigate whether it’s bloatware or not. Once you’re certain, uninstall it right away.
The second method is to use a bulk uninstaller software that scans your system and let you uninstall bloatware at bulk number.
All that being said, this bloatware issue quite happens with Windows users mostly. MacOS, Linux and Chrome OS laptops hardly come with any such bloatware software.
3. Protect your laptop from virus
Before you get to connect your laptop to the internet, it’s quite a 101 to install a solid, good quality antivirus software. As you know, it’s an era of cyber attacks and malware. And anyone at any corner of the internet ecosystem is possible victims of it.
So, it’s safe to be safe in the first place. Some vendors will provide you with a pre-installed antivirus software system,. And in Windows OS, there is a pre-built Windows Defender Security Systems that are meant to do the same job.
But the best way out is to install a third party antivirus software that sports several additional features. This list of features includes ransomware protection, spyware protection, real-time protection and many more.
Although there are many free third party antivirus software available. But we recommend using ones which have paid subscription.
4. Set your start menu up
After all these hassles, you are ready to enter into the real usable parts of your computer, and that starts with the start menu. With Windows 10, Microsoft brought back the start menu, in a better and more intuitive way.
But among all the tiles that come with the start menu of Windows 10, you might like to trim off some. As an example, if you are not interested in games and interested in news stuff instead, you would like to take off all the game tiles from the Start menu.
You can do that by clicking on any tile, and choose ‘Unpin from Start’. Repeat the process for all the unwanted options out there in the start menu.
5. Enable Automatic Backup
Once you will start using the laptop on full swing, there will be tons of documents scattered in drives, desktop, and where not. But think about a sudden laptop hard drive crash. All of those important files will be gone. And it’s quite a hectic process to recover the hard disk over again to get those files back.
So what would you do to escape such problematic scenarios? Well, Windows 10 offers a number of backup methods. And equipping your laptop with one of them is one of the preliminary tasks from our viewpoint.
There are System Restore, Backup and Restore, Recovery Drive Creator and many more options in Windows to help you throughout this process. In MacOS, there is the time machine feature that can provide an equivalent solution to you.
6. Set up the basic power settings
Before we end up this list, we’d like to bring another important issue into your attention. And that is optimizing the power and sleep settings.
This setting included:
- Define what happens when you press the power button(both on battery or AC power).
- Define what happens when you close the lid(both on battery or AC power).
- What happens when the display dims off.
- Define what happens when your laptop gets into the sleep mode.
Bottom Line
That’s the complete discussion on what things to do when you get a new laptop. In fact, there are a number of additional steps that are also required to do as you get the new laptop. Hopefully, you will get them right away once you are done with these 6 steps. Hope to have a safe journey for your new laptop.