After the clean-up, where do I go from here?

Question

I had some major problems with my computer, but after some twenty hours of phone support I got it fixed (hopefully).

Now, all I really have on this computer is what it came with when I originally had it. I bought this computer about a year and two months before this date. It came to my house on my 18th birthday, on July 23rd, 2007.

I have Windows Vista Home Premium, Intel Duel-Core 1.8 CPU, 2 Gigs DDR-RAM, 8400 GS NVidia Graphics Card, with the optional lightscribe, fingerswiping, and mic. I'm just wondering what are the core files and things I should be downloading/doing before I go back to college a week from now.

I would also like to know all the features that are included with Windows Vista, how to download the optional features online, and how to optimize my experience of using my HP Pavilion dv2500 notebook computer.

Answer 1

Backup software.

If your hard drive dies, do you have the right discs to restore the replacement drive to factory fresh? If not, get them from HP. Can you back up your whole system and restore it later? Can you find a file you wrote last month?

Antivirus and antimalware. AVG, Avast, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy have good reputatins.

Student software licenses should be available from your school, usually a good deal.