just ordered new dell xps with i7, when i get it i thought about just formatting the drive to get rid of all the crap programs that usually come with PCs

it comes with win7 home premium 64 and i have win 7 64 pro i could put on it.

any thoughts?

I do a clean install of every computer I get. Fortunately, as IT staff, I get the machines with no OS usually. My editing machines do come with OS's on them, and they are immediately scrubbed, re-partitioned, patched, and have only my few programs on them. It's amazing how fast they are without the junk on them. And how much more disk space you have available!

I always format the harddrives on my dell pc's once I get them, I also replace the start up disk with one of my own (have some raptor disks from WD) and then I use the original start up disk as data or back-up disk. I know that Dell did partitions their startup disk as NTFS and a small part fat32 for diagnostic purposes but I actually never cared about that, just wiped it clean from the start and reinstalled the OS. In that way you have much better control on what is active on your pc.

Another vote for clean install, with a warning - don't call Dell if you get stuck...

In other words, do it only if you absolutely know what you're doing.

Editing machine or not, I wipe every new computer I get.

Not just for speed, but it'll be much more stable too, so long as you don't screw anything up.

Greg

Clean install all the way baby. I have a habit of doing a clean install, get all the latest patches and uninstall not needed software that part of the OS like games, window mail or outlook express etc..and make an image of it for safe keeping. I then load all the software such NLE, add on and tweak to my liking such as setting and make a second image out of that. Once a year, after a wedding season, I wipe my PC clean and re-image it. In 10 minutes or so I'll have my PC ready for action again.

Allan, you are exactly describing my workflow when preparing a new pc, that is by far the most safest and productive way to prepare yourself for every new weddingseason.

Before you wipe and clean install,

May I suggest you make an image (an IMAGE, not copy) of the HDD that came with the system, immediately, without doing anything. It might be full of bloatware or whatever, but it's OEM and will help you if you ever need to deal with warranty stuff.

I agree with Fitz, good to keep a restorable image. If you ever sell the computer, you can bring it back to its original state.

I did a similar thing but got a new Latitude i7 with a 250GB SSD first time I had this type of storage. the thing does boot really fast. it came with 1920x1080 screen and all the connectors you could imagine! I've already plugged it into my 30 dell monitor 2560x1600 through display port and it had no problem driving that resolution graphics. I'm put my Adobe PP CS5 and Photoshop CS5 on it. for sort of a portable edit machine. this time I got a 15" screen because I wanted the weight of the unit to be less than 6 lbs. I also using windows 7 pro 32-bit but can go to 64-bit. I have 64 bit windows 7 pro on my optiplex 780 and XPS M170 (17" screen).