New toys arrived, now need some setting up!

[Tippet]

Been almost a month since I got these goodies:

i5 2400
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
8 gigs Corsair Vengeance 1333
CoolerMaster 690 II Advanced usb 3
Corsair GS 550
212 Evo
Gigabyte 7770 OC 1.1 ghz
Samsung 830 128 Gb
Seagate 2TB 7200 rpm
Corsair Voyager 32 gb usb 3 flash disk

Still waiting for some free time to set it up but until then, any good guides for doing so? I think I can manage handling the hardware but I am not very confident on the software (still welcome though!). I never used a SSD before and I keep reading about tips to enhance performance/lifetime. What about Windows setup? Any trash services I should be getting rid of? What is the best order for installing drivers and programs? I am interested in free programs that get the job done (dvd burning, document editing, players and codecs, media editors and transcoders, zipping tools etc). What about antivirus programs? Is there a good one that autoupdate can be disabled (to prevent unnecessary SSD writes) or with an option of not running at startup? I am also thinking of trying Linux for the first time. It doesn't need to be on the SSD since it will be there for educational purposes and light tasks. How do I handle it?

[jmcgee_jr]

Been almost a month since I got these goodies:

i5 2400
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
8 gigs Corsair Vengeance 1333
CoolerMaster 690 II Advanced usb 3
Corsair GS 550
212 Evo
Gigabyte 7770 OC 1.1 ghz
Samsung 830 128 Gb
Seagate 2TB 7200 rpm
Corsair Voyager 32 gb usb 3 flash disk

Still waiting for some free time to set it up but until then, any good guides for doing so? I think I can manage handling the hardware but I am not very confident on the software (still welcome though!). I never used a SSD before and I keep reading about tips to enhance performance/lifetime. What about Windows setup? Any trash services I should be getting rid of? What is the best order for installing drivers and programs? I am interested in free programs that get the job done (dvd burning, document editing, players and codecs, media editors and transcoders, zipping tools etc). What about antivirus programs? Is there a good one that autoupdate can be disabled (to prevent unnecessary SSD writes) or with an option of not running at startup? I am also thinking of trying Linux for the first time. It doesn't need to be on the SSD since it will be there for educational purposes and light tasks. How do I handle it?

If you install windows 7 from scratch with the sata ports set to AHCI, there are no tweaks needed for trim etc. There is also no need to disable autoupdates and the such to save on the wear on the SSD, I use my Crucial just like any other drive I have ever had, and the performance from the first day is the same, I have a 256GB ver and use about 175GB worth of data on it.

DVD-Burning, CDBurnerXP (yes it works great under w7 it's just the original name)
Document Editing, Office still but OpenOffice is good for free
Codecs etc, I wouldn't worry too much about just use VLC.
Transcoding, would be handbrake for windows.
Zip I still use winrar, the free version rocks and has a 64bit ver too.

Like I said above, there is no need to worry about performance issues as all drives support TRIM these days, just make sure you install the latest intel drivers and also set sata to AHCI.

Enjoy.