New Gadget: Sony Vaio E 11136CGB

I am without a personal computer ever since I sold away my 2 years ago. I have been using the laptop that my company provided. After 2 years of looking around, I finally decided to get this which fit most of my needs:

Comes with a free cheap plastic wireless mouse and a free soft case

Running an AMD dual core with integrated ATI Radeon Graphics which is more powerful than the Intel GMA

Inside the box:

The laptop itself...

The keyboard is a nice touch. The matt finish does not leave fingerprints

The right sie with mic, earphone, USB 2.0, Card Reader, full ethernet port 

the left side with USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA and power inlet

The bottom which the battery is removable and a cover which access to HDD and memory

Powerup Running Windows 8

So What do you do after you got your new windows 8 laptop?
1. Register Your laptop Warranty
2. Register your Microsoft Windows 8
3. Make a Recovery Media. You can use either a USB thumbdrive or DVD. I used 16G USB thumbdrive to be sufficient. This recovery media will recovery your windows to original factory state if there is a unrecoverable system crash and there is also tool to repair the bootup crash.
http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-tip-create-recovery-media-144098

4. Do Software Updates. Especially for Windows Updates. I also did updates for my Vaio Software
5. Install all the softwares that you need. I have installed the followings:
    a. VLC - Video Player
    b. XnView - Photo Organizer
    c. Gimp - PhotoShop alternative for image processing

6. Make a Recovery Image of your Current Windows 8 for refreshing your laptop to the current state (including the software you have installed). Save the image to your internal HDD and make a copy as backup to the external copy in case there is a HDD crash. The size of image depends on the software and updates your have installed. My image is 32Gb.
More details at
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/create-a-custom-recovery-image-for-windows-8s-refresh-your-pc-tool/7413


However, Window 8 is not the OS that I am going to use so after doing all the above steps, I went on the install the OS I wanted:

Reboot using LiveUSB for Peppermint 4 OS

More details on Peppermint OS 4 in the next post......stay tuned