Things to check right after you bring your camera home

I suggest you buy an additional battery and then go out for an all day shoot and remove the power off timer to see how long your battery will last. It should last at least the recommend timing from the specifications.

All the clean sensors and sharp lenses in the world won't help when your battery peters out in a shorter than expected time.

I personally have never run a battery down all the way because they last a long time and I have shot most of the day before, like most of you have, of course.

Additionally, fill up your CF card and then dowload and reformat it and ensure it holds approx. the same number of pics. I have read where the number of pics the cards hold sometimes dwindles and they should be approx. the same (depending on ISO setting, etc...).

Checking for dead/hot/stuck sensor pixels

Check for dead/hot/stuck sensor pixels:

Take a pic with lens cap on, low ISO, high f/stop, long shutter speed (say ISO 100, f/22, 1 sec.), manual focus to infinity. Since you've set for low ISO, you want long shutter speed to give any hot pixels time to respond and show themselves.

Take another with lens cap on, high ISO, high f/stop, short shutter speed (say ISO 1600, f/22, 1/4000th), manual focus to infinity. Since you're at high ISO, you want short shutter speed or "noise" is going to make this test impossible. I guess if you're really die-hard you could try some longer shutter speeds and try to figure-out if any anomalies you see are noise or bad pixels.

Take a pic of something light or white, low ISO, low f/stop, long shutter speed (say ISO 100, f/4, 1/4). Anything that is enough to give you a light image. Manual focus to infinity.

Now examine these 3 images. The most detailed way is to shoot as RAW, convert to lossless format like TIFF, then examine on your computer. Probably good enough...if your cam's LCD zooms in pretty far on the image, then zoom in and examine on your camera.