Hey, Perhaps somebody out there might want to lend a brain to my compiling options/methods/variations on customizing my new machine. I'm neither a neophyte, nor an accomplished tech; however, my estimation may be biased by the fact that I have to live with myself. Anyway, turns out my family has grown tired of all the foot-pedal cranking, Tesla-coil buzzing, and Quentin Tarantinoesque cussing coming out of my office. So, they all chipped in, meaning they probably used my credit card, and bought me an HP Pavilion laptop. While getting-to-the-point is my ultimate goal, a note about what I now know is called bloatware: Holy-Mary-mother-of-God. Now, the point. I've been educating myself, sitting here in front of this beautiful screen, eyes pinned back Clockwork Orange-style, attempting not to destroy a gift that was supposed to reduce my need to wail on various inanimate objects with my now boomerang shaped TaylorMade R11 driver. Then some kind soul/now currently-recovering burn victim mentions I can simply post a question on a message board and receive suggestions from professionals, obsessives, and the occasional bored prison inmate. Specs are as follows: HP dv7t Quad; i7-2670QM; 1GB GDDR5 Radeon HD 7470M Graphics (if that matters), with something like a 17'' screen; 750GB hard drive; Windows 7 Home Premium; pretty much the stock model you'd see at your local Costco. Thank you, by the way for enduring this, even if you don't reply. So, I have this rather slick looking machine with tons of programs and/or crap on it and I'd like to streamline it, have it run at its optimal, maybe perform a few cool tricks graphically, and hopefully learn more from it than how to make expensive trebuchet ammunition. Suggestions? Recommendations? Turnover recipes? JC
