Steps in making sure everything is running fine.

[Tadros]

My new MBP 17 inch will be arriving on Friday and I was just wondering what steps I can take in making sure everything is running smoothly. Any tips? I want to catch any errors quickly so I don't install all my stuff and then have to send it back.

 

[miles01110]

Turn it on. If it brings you to the setup screen, it is working fine.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could run the Apple Hardware Test to test the hardware, but normally they just run fine. You could use Time Machine to backup your Mac and then restore in the unlikely case of failure of your Mac.
Or you can use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to make a 1:1 copy of your Macintosh HD to an external HDD and have a bootable and copy-back-able copy of Mac OS X and all your data and applications.

 

[adztaylor]

Best advice I can give is to just use it. Any problems will arise if there are any.

 

[adnoh]

run some benchmarks like cinebench and geekbench a couple of times to stress test the system. if its all ok then everything will be running fine.

 

[Tadros]

Anything else I should know? Aside from making sure the comp is updated to 10.6.7 I was thinking of maybe doing a fresh install of the OS before installing anything - then I thought... what's the point, it IS a new computer after all.

 

[sotomsays]

You will be fine...just enjoy it!