Best Practices for pre-installed XP on AAO?

I managed to pick up a 1GB/120GB XP system from Best Buy on Tuesday, and I'm loving it.

I have preferred Macs, and can happily tinker with them under the hood. I'd love to put OS X on my AAO, but I'm holding off for a bit because of a) the sleep problem and b) I'll probably break it.

I am comfortable with XP as a user, but I will confess I find it more than a little confusing.

I've seen a lot of mention on various boards here about various tweaks and setting which might help boost performance, or boost battery life, or maybe even both. I've looked through the "Steps to a Happy XP Experience" thread, but most of it seems to refer to installing XP on a Linux AAO.

Could some kind soul give me the skinny on:

What Software and Firmware updates should I install, if any, and where do I find them?

What settings should I use to fine-tune XP for maximum battery life? Are there any utilities/hacks I might consider?

Same as above, but for maximum performance (when on the AC adapter)?

It seems there are quite a few "hidden" configuration tricks which make a big difference, or rather, they're hidden from an XP newbie like me.

Thanks very much in advance.

Eric

 

Whoa. Big subject. Could go on for a long time...

Here's a few basics. ppl, please feel free to add...

1) Start up programs... You want as few as possible while maintaining a good balance of functionality. IE, don't disable your antivirus!!
2) Services... Here, your Windows loads up things you may never need, they can just sit there using CPU resources and never do anything. I have found that http://www.blackviper.com/ is a great place to go and learn about disabling un needed services. Do a bit of reading there and see.
3) temp files, junk files, etc..... I like ccleaner from http://www.filehippo.com. There a good amount of free and useful software there.
4) defrag! Defragment the hard disc periodically, every month minimum, more if you are adding lots of software!
5) Google is your friend. There's dozens of Windows XP optimization guides out there.
6) Get familiar with task manager. ctrl + alt + del.
If you have more than say, 40 processes running at boot up, that's getting high.
You can control the files loading with Windows by using 'msconfig'. Click start, run and type it in and hit enter.

there's a few tips. hope they help!

 

The best thing to do first is to remove the included office 2007 trial and the trial antivirus. Then install a free software called openoffice or install office 2007 if you can get a copy. After that, install windows defender from Microsoft. That's all you need to do.

Do not download anything you don't know. Do not go to free porn site on this. Do whatever is normal on this laptop.

If you do the above, you probably won't get any virus at all and it'll perform at its top condition for a few years.

If you like the MacOS interface, install a MacOS theme and it'll look almost exactly like a MacOS.

 

Definitely remove the 60-day trial of McAfee. After removing it, my initial memory usage after booting up Windows dropped from > 300 MB to around 180 MB since the McAfee software has so many services associated with it. Suggest using some like AVG 7.5 or Kaspersky, though people have their own preferences and I've heard good things about NOD32.

CCleaner is a great app. You may also want to run msconfig to see if there's any startup services that can be disabled - from my experience there are A LOT. Go to:
http://sysinfo.org/

Search for the startup item name there (second search box - `Startup Info`) and see if it can be safely disabled. Or, just do Google search on the startup item's executable name and you should be able to find some good info on whether it can be removed.

It's sad that laptops nowadays come bundled with so much "bloatware" - well at least the Windows ones. I suppose it makes sense from the manufacturer's point of view, who undoubtedly get some money from the developers of the bloatware.

 

I wish Acer includes like a hundred bloatware on this thing so they would lower the price to around $100. Since I ways do a clean install of OS anyways, bloatware doesn't affect me.