Hi, I'm David Murphy,
Lifehacker's new senior tech editor,
and your guide for this lightning round.
Let's set the stage:
You just unboxed a brand-new Windows 10 PC.
Or you're a little advanced and you put Windows 10
on your Mac, thanks to Boot Camp.
Either way, you are ready to get started
in your brand-new Windows experience.
So the most important thing and the most annoying thing
you can do with your brand-new Windows 10 PC
is to make sure that you're getting
the most recent security updates, patches, and drivers
for your brand new OS.
To do this, you simply tap on the Start menu button.
You type in “Windows update”
and then you start the annoying but important process
of checking for updates, restarting your computer,
checking for updates.
Let's say you have a printer—
you might want to look up your printer's manufacturer
and grab their drivers for Windows instead
as opposed to Microsoft's.
In some cases, this might mean the difference
between being able to print double-sided
and being able to do nothing on your brand-new printer.
One of the coolest things you can do
for a brand new Windows PC is
to use a website called Ninite
to make yourself a custom installation package.
That sounds really nerdy.
Here's what that means:
You go to the website.
You pick a bunch of apps that you want to install,
like Chrome or Firefox
or Notepad++ if you're super cool.
What it does—it creates a single set of program for you
so that way you just double-click on that
when you downloaded it, and poof!
Every program you've picked automatically installs for you.
You don't have to worry about doing it all yourself.
It saves a ton of time.
One app you really should check out as part of that package
is the anti-virus tool Avast.
Even though Windows ships with Windows Defender,
which is a pretty good anti-virus tool,
there are better.
And Avast is one of the best free programs you can get
that you should install in your PC, ASAP.
Adding apps and games is important
but you also want to take a few moments
to remove all the crap that Microsoft has already put
on your system that you're never gonna use.
For example, hit the Start menu:
There are a lot of icons
that you will never, ever probably touch.
That includes poor little Solitaire.
So pull up programs and features,
rip them all off your system,
save some space and make sure
that you will never, ever have this stuff to look at ever again.
Now to get even more geeky into the settings weeds,
you wanna go to the Control Panel,
pull up System, and then Advanced System Settings.
For example, you can set the name of your PC.
You can also turn off System Restore,
which might sound like something you don't want to do.
But if you're not the kind of person
who knows you'll ever use System Restore,
then why give up all the extra hard drive space
for a feature that you won't touch?
Now, you might have heard advice to never ever turn
off the firewall, because a firewall is a great way
to keep hackers and other nefarious people
from messing with your stuff.
Here's the thing though:
Your wireless router has a stronger firewall
than your Windows machine.
So you don't really need a firewall in your private network.
You can turn that off.
Keep the firewall on for public networks,
so when you're browsing in a coffee shop,
you'll at least have a little more protection.
But at home, let your router do the work for you.
The most important account on your Windows PC
is your Microsoft account.
Now, if you already have one,
you want to take some time right now to log into it.
If you don't have one, you wanna create one.
What that does is it ties your Windows key,
the activation key that you hopefully have typed in
by now, to a brand new Microsoft account
and that will stay with you forever then.
Right below the Settings screen, where you put
in your Microsoft account, is also an option
to add other third-party accounts
to integrate with Windows.
So you could have everything you need, right there, directly
in your operating system.
Now it's time to make Windows 10 pretty.
Pull up the Taskbar settings and you can decide
if you even wanna see the Taskbar
on your Windows 10 desktop
or where you want it to be.
If you have a picture of your cat
that you just have to set as your desktop background,
here's where you do it.
You can also tile it to look even more strange.
You can also adjust the colors of your Windows 10 experience
if you happen to have a certain shade of blue or green
that you want to permeate throughout your entire desktop.
Also important is the Windows 10 lock screen.
Now, not only can you customize what image you want to see
on the lock screen as you're logging into Windows
with your pin or your passcode.
You can also decide what apps you want to receive
a quick status from, which will show you updates
about your day without ever having to log in to your system.
We've covered a lot of basics.
But there is so much more you can do in Windows 10
to customize your PC and really make it your own.