Name: The New Machine Checklist: Set It Up Once, Properly
Brand: YKS
Availability: InStock

The New Machine Checklist: Set It Up Once, Properly

Everything to do on a new laptop or phone before you start using it, in the order that saves doing half of it twice. Free, one page, print it.

A new machine is the one moment when doing things in the right order is nearly free. Everything on this list is quick on an empty computer and tedious on a full one.

The order is the product

Recovery first: account access, recovery codes, a second factor that does not live on the device you are setting up. Then backup, before there is anything worth losing. Then data, then applications, then preferences — the layer people usually start with and the one that matters least.

The part everyone skips

Write down what you did. Which account the machine is signed in to, where the recovery codes are kept, what the disk encryption key is and where it is stored. The checklist has a block for this because the alternative is reconstructing it under pressure in two years.

Print it, tick it, keep it

It is a sheet of paper next to a new machine for an afternoon, and then it is a record of how that machine was set up. Both jobs are worth the page.

What you get

In dependency order — the things that are painful to do later come first
Security, backup and recovery before any of the fun parts
A hand-off section for the details future-you will need and not remember
Free, no email required

Questions

It is deliberately platform-neutral, because the order is the valuable part and the order is the same everywhere: recovery before data, data before apps, apps before preferences. Every item is phrased as the outcome rather than the menu path, so it does not go stale with the next release.

Because a backup you set up on day one protects the work you do on day two, and a backup you plan to set up 'once everything is installed' reliably happens three months and one disk failure later. It takes about fifteen minutes on an empty machine and rather longer on a full one.