Alpha Technical Solutions

Posts Tagged ‘how’

It’s the last few days before Christmas and one of the hottest technology items that will be given away will once again be the laptop. If you are going to be giving away a laptop I would ask you to take a moment to think about the recipient. The person you are giving the laptop to will want to use it straight away. However if you give it to them out of the box they’re going to have to go through the first run sequence and then if they are sensible they’re going to download updates and get a good anti-virus solution going before they do anything. Christmas day is a day for fun- not being sensible. So I say why not prepare the laptop for them. Get it ready so that all they have to do is press the on button and have some fun.

Remember these  steps and you won’t go far wrong.

Before you start doing anything plug the laptop into the mains. Never setup a new laptop using the battery, you probably won’t have that much charge in the battery and you should fully charge a laptop before giving it away anyhow.

Start the laptop and follow the wizard to get it ready for use. At this point make the name of the user account the name of the person who is going to be using the laptop. If you are security conscious create a separate admin account and a named ordinary user account for its owner. In the long run this is more sensible – although you probably won’t be thanked for it.

Ok now that the laptop is up and running take a moment to see what software has been preinstalled on it. Get rid of 30 or 60 day demo software unless you are also giving away a licence for it. Take a look at the anti-virus software too. Chances are it will be a demo that will run out in a month. Unless you are paying for the antivirus get rid of that too. You don’t want to have the person you are giving the laptop too worrying about this one month after they receive it. I’ll tell you where to get an excellent free anti-virus from in a moment. The basic rule at this stage is get rid of things that are unnecessary or that will start asking for money in the near future.

Take a moment to check the firewall is on. It should be on all modern computers – but lets just be sure of that shall we.
Now it is time to go online. Your first destination should be:  http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/ This is the home of Microsoft Security Essentials a first class and free piece of software that guards against viruses, spyware and other malicious software. Told you not to worry about removing the antivirus.

By this point Windows Updates should have started downloading. If they haven’t go to Windows Update and start running Windows Update.  You should now download and install all the of the updates you can. These are an essential part of securing a PC so make sure that download all of the available updates. Also take a moment here to make sure that automatic updates are turned on. This will help keep the PC secure in the long run.

When the updates are complete take a moment to install a second browser. Its always a good idea to have a spare browser on a computer. Firefox, and Chrome are good choices here. Come to think of it – I prefer both Chrome and Firefox to Internet Explorer.

You’re almost done now – this next step is simply to install any software that you think the person who’s going to be using the software might like.

Make sure the laptop is fully charged. Once it is turn it off, unplug it and let the laptop cool down. Once it is cool you can wrap it up and give it away.

Do this and you will have a ready to use laptop, someone will be delighted on Christmas day.