Every now and someone asks, “I just got my new Tablet PC, and there is a lot of software pre-loaded that I don't need. How do I remove it?”

The concerns:

• There are over 70 running processes. My desktop machine doesn't have that many. What can I remove?
• I need a clean copy of Windows XP Tablet PC edition so I can start fresh without all the stuff that the manufacturer loaded on my machine.
• I paid for ___ megabytes of memory and ___ are being consumed by these mysterious processes

Ideas

There are those who want to dominate the technology by wringing every last bit of performance out of it.

There are those who accept the machine as it is delivered, add their applications and go about their business.

I am definitely in the second group, delighted that for the most part, what is delivered is stable and functional as a foundation for the applications software and data I will add. If there are more processes running than on a desktop machine, it doesn't matter to me unless their presence is impeding my ability to work productively. Most of them are idle unless actually in use. I usually install extra memory and don't worry about whatever extra memory consumption is being reported in Task Manager by those processes.

You could go to (what would be for me) an extreme, and stop all processes that you not using at any given time, and then fire them up when you need them. For example you could stop tabtip.exe except when actually inking. I'm not advocating that. It's just an illustration.

Bottom line?

If something is actually causing grief or broken then I deal with it. If it is relatively benign then I leave it alone.

I don't need to dominate the technology to use it. I usually have some work that needs to be done, and the time is better spent doing that work. If you want to tinker and tweak, do it on a machine that is not your production environment or make sure that you have a good recovery plan.

Suggestions:

If you received Recovery media (CDs or DVDs) try the Recovery Procedure that should be outlined in the documentation. It is better to learn how this works before you actually need it. If you didn't receive media but instead need to 'burn your own' CDs, then do that. I think that the new Tecra M4s require this step. Do it immediately after receiving your machine. Then test that the Recovery procedure works.

Live with your new machine for awhile and find out what it can do, and what you can do with it. If after having done that you still want to poke at those processes, you will have a deeper understanding of how doing that may impact you.