Top tech tips for setting up a new PC

Bought a new PC during end of financial year sales? Here are a few tips for getting it setup quickly and securely



By Alex Choros

Bought a new PC during end of financial year sales? Here are a few tips for getting it setup quickly and securely

Firstly, uninstall any pre-installed software you don't need. Get rid of those free trials you'll never open. Get rid of any free antivirus trials, especially if you have your own one to install. These will only take up precious hard drive space, bog your machine down and potentially cause conflicts.

Before you do anything else, download all of the updates. Yes, all of them. This might take a while, but running the latest software means you have the greatest chance of being secure.

Ninite is a heaven send. Ninite is a website that lets you pick all the applications you want to install onto your PC, and download and install them all at once. Not only does this save you visiting each website individually, it also alleviates the hassle of constantly clicking next. Ninite allows you to install most freely available software, ranging from Chrome to Dropbox to iTunes to Spotify to Adobe Reader.

Moving over from an old PC? While it might be tempting to move over all of your old data, you shouldn't necessarily do this. Copy over all of your important files and documents, but put anything you don't regularly use on an external hard drive. This ensures your hard drive will still have plenty of free space.

Starting on a fresh computer means it’s the perfect time to start to move to the cloud. Using Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox as your main document storage is a great way to ensure you always have a backup of anything important. Windows 8.1 makes this super easy with its tight OneDrive integration.

And as simple as this is, make sure you write down all of your relevant software serial numbers and keep them safe! You never know when you'll need them again.