After a lot of battling with a certain online seller (see previous thread if curious) my laptop arrived today despite their customer services saying my order had been cancelled and I was not getting it. They really have no idea what they are doing!

Anyway, I now have a shiny new laptop with Windows 7 I need to equip software and hardware wise, I’m very out of touch with computer stuff so recommendations would be appreciated:

Off the top of my head:

Office (I was just about to buy the current version but I just spotted the new Office 2013 preview – shall I put this on for now?

Capable graphics package for general stuff (have used paint.net and gimp many years ago but found them hard to use compared to photoshop for some reason)

PDF creator/editor

Decent pendrive (was looking at this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-Drive-Premium-Metal-Casing/dp/B005SP91UW/ref=pd_rhf_cr_shvl2)

Laptop sleeve for a 15.6″ ultrabook/mac book pro style laptop

Recommendations please…

PS I have one of these on pre-order: http://leapmotion.com/

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6KuiuteIA[/video]

First of all, you need to figure out what software you already have and don’t need.

Remove all laptop bloatware. What brand is it?

begins with a D. I was wondering if I should do a full reinstall. Just booted it up and installed chome and that is it.

It does have an SSD as well as a 750Gb HDD but it’s only 32gb which I hear isn’t really big enough for the OS these days (!!!!!!) so it is currently used for hibernation etc. Tempted to fit a larger SSD and reinstall the OS onto it.

have a .ac.uk? webaddress you can get office for cheap then 🙂

I do as I am university staff and easily satisfy all the requirements in terms of minimum hours and the pdf requirement is pretty much for writing papers. Just wondered about sticking the preview on for now.

If you have a plain Windows disk (and license) ie not the recovery disk, then you could do worse than start with a fresh install and add the stuff you need. You might have to install drivers for whatever extra buttons or function keys your laptop has, these are probably available from their website.

32GB should be enough for the OS if you keep it clean. The OS files only get big when you have loads of Windows update backups and rollback points and stuff. I wonder if you can choose where it saves that crap?

no OS discs. I suspect I need to go find a blank DVD and burn them off.

I do have an app disc though for the other stuff.

there doesnt seem to be any bloat so far except windows is a bit D*** branded and previous experience has shown this to be included in the windows disc.

have a .ac.uk?

software4students.co.uk then.

You don’t necessarily need the clean disks. You cna jsut remove the crap manually.

if it’s Dell there’ll be lots of guides on the internet – lots of people are anoyed with it all.

there doesnt seem to be any bloat so far

There will be, trust me!