New Laptop

So i picked up a new acer 5738 on the 6th of july 2009. The last one i picked up was in 24th of october 2004. So 5 years of awesome service and continuing, oh its an acer TM 4001 LMi.

Well here is the problem

--Comes with Windows Vista--

So i decided to throw in XP 64

So i grabbed myself a copy of windows xp 64 bit -- Yeah i got it with out SP1 or SP2

before i started on the install i made recovery cds for the system and the drivers, took 3 dvds

i popped it in and started the install

- come to formatting i was presented with 2 partitions one with the vista install and the other with the recovery patrtition. I decided to leave the recovery partition as is just in case. ( Yeah i made recovery cds and left the partition as well which is like 10gb)

So i deleted it and started the install and by god i had a fully installed system in the next 16 minutes.

So i have the system up. First thing i do is to install Firefox ( i hate ie )

Then i need an antivirus, thought of pushing in opensourse/freeware only, so i got the avast home free. No comments on it yet.

Next, i dont like the windows explorer so got free commander which is cool and gives me all the tools except 1 to do all i need.

the 1 function i needed was mass copier which was FAST!! again picked up Terracopy man it transfered 250 GB in 19 minutes and thats impressive.

Now that i had all the software i needed the drivers went on the acer website and got em all. All except 1 installs with the listings on the XP 32 bit. I still have not able to get the fingerprint reader to work, but i think i can live without it, but am gonna try and get it installed.

Downloaded RadarSync - its an automated driver updater. and updated all of it.

Onto Media, i need a pretty decent media player which can manage music, download artwork have a compatibility with ipods and get my podcasts. So as i had used this before i went with songbird with a couple of addons i was ready to go.

Hmm what do i do for video-- Ha vlc player they have come out with the latest version 1.0.0.0. Got it Installed it and associated all video files to it.

Okay now, Instant Messenger. My favorite as of now is digsby got it installed it and logged in had everything as is and i just clicked to login.

So this is what i had to do to get my new laptop upto speed and usable. Oh yeah i also imported my Bookmarks. Cant live without it.