yes, u need a mini display port to vga adapter..

ya.. like the macbook.. i bought from 3rd party from china, around RM35.. so far so good, had been used in presentation twice and plug in to several monitor before, everything ok.. if buy with apple around rm200 i think.. not sure.. according to some source from google, if use apple adapter with dell, some monitor or projector cant display.. google for it..

when i got the laptop with all the included crap-ware, on standard 500gb hard drive, I think i clocked around 57 seconds. It's considered not that slow la.. if you want, you could reformat and use the provided cd to reinstall everything, this completely removes any crap-ware, but you'll have to download the latest drivers though, the included driver cd have some out-dated ones.

In my setup, I ripped out the hard disk after first boot and plonked in my old ssd, reinstalled everything, now it boots within 15 seconds.

Why you need to format? You can restore you dell system to factory image from advanced boot options, you can vie here for step-by-step: http://support.dell.com/support/topics/glo...6&isLegacy=true

You can partitions your C:/OS, shrink it a bit a create another partition. Move all your files to this new partitions, if you already have partitions just move all files out of C:/OS. Restore system will only format your C:/ drive, so all other partitions is good. Just to be safe, maybe you can burn or copy them to Ext HD, but this work for me.

You should see 1 for C:/OS and another 1 for your partitioned drive. Then simply restore factory image, it will format only drive C, so all your files in the other drives are ok.

Anyway, you maybe already know this, but worth mentioning here. You can try disk clean up, error checking and defrag on both drives. Then, just put your system on hibernate instead of shutdown. Waking up you laptop from hibernate mode are much faster then fresh boot, it takes about 15-20 sec.

Normal time you can access it?
It should be hidden..

The microsoft visual, its normal, when you do Windows update or software installation, they install it..

Q drive usually used by Microsoft Office
How many partition you have on your HDD, from the Disk Management ?

If you have create the backup disc then it's ok to delete the recovery partition. Otherwise, just leave it there you never know when you need it.

As mention by lee_what2004, Q partition usually use by Microsoft Office. from the Disk Management you should see 4 partitions, OEM, recovery, C and E.

Can you run this for a while and see if got red bar?
http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe

Did you run it when playing movie/music ?

Try update your wifi driver. Might help reduce the redbar.
You using on Power Saver, Balanced or ?

Yours Win 7 Home Premium?