Pre-ordered the SP3, is there a new user guide or best practice guide?

[MrFrosty]

Hello everyone

I pre-ordered the SP3 (i5, 128GB) and wanted to ask if there was a special list of to-dos to optimize a new SP3 out of the box.

What I mean is, removing bloatware, changing certain settings to optimize performance, downloading drivers, and generally setting it up correctly for best results.

Thanks in advance!

OT bit:
I've been window shopping since forever... wanted a normal notebook, then considered a hybrid 2-in-1 (e.g. Asus Transformer T100 then T200) before finally settling on the SP3. Hopefully, there won't be any buyer's remorse. So far, I've been watching youtube videos. Really just want a multipurpose device that's portable and can be moved around from room to room as well as on the road.

 

[malberttoo]

Welcome to the forum!

You will be pleasantly surprised to find that Microsoft installs NO bloatware on their devices. So there is that!

I'm sure other folks will chime in here shortly with their list of favorite tweaks. For me, I come from a ThinkPad laptop background, and really missed a nice big readout in the system tray that tells me how much battery % or time I have remaining, and Battery Bar (https://batterybarpro.com/) really filled that void for me

 

[drolem]

You will be pleasantly surprised to find that Microsoft installs NO bloatware on their devices.

Personally, I consider Win 8.1 a bloatware but it's kinda hard to use the SP3 without it. '

My 2 tips:
a) by default, the setup requires some kind of microsoft ID -- make sure you have one in advance, or just don't enable any Wi-Fi connection, so you can do a setup without the ID
b) run windowsupdate until all available updates are installed

 

[malberttoo]

Personally, I consider Win 8.1 a bloatware but it's kinda hard to use the SP3 without it.

Ha ha nice. There's a few of you in every crowd, I suppose...

I had no use for Win 8 before my SP3, now I really like it. I'm 50/50 between use of the Metro and Desktop environments.