Not A Graceful Recovery For HP Customers

An alert reader named michael pointed out this article running at Infoworld on the policy instated by HP of supplying actual Windows XP backup media for their Pavilion only if owners really, really need them. While HP and other vendors have been moving to recovery partitions for a little while, it seems like HP customers have to jump through particular hoops to demonstrate they really need physical media, and aren't very happy about it. The article makes a good point too regarding the installation of Linux partitions. The banner ad on the page is for --guess what? -- Windows XP.

Comments

this would tick me off

[qubit64]

I love having my xp cd. I reinstall every few months at least (and now and again a few times in a week) and if I didn't get my cd with my computer I'd go nuts.

Re:this would tick me off

[MaxVlast]

First of all, that's hardly a troll.

Second of all, what a dreadful OS. I'm glad I don't have to think of anything like that on any of my computers.

I agree with the outrage at the lack of media, but I find it even more amazing that something so obviously faulty (a few reinstalls a week) could have so many people happy using it. Just because it's the best of the crap doesn't mean that it isn't crap, too.

Re:this would tick me off

[marktwain]

At least you're not having to reinstall WinXP daily. ;)

It sounds to me like HP has hired a new Harvard MBA. Sounds like an "innovative" business plan to me to shave yet another dollar off the bottom line.

Re:this would tick me off

[dxkelly]

Hmm... Guess I'll stick with 95 and 98. I've never had to reinstall either.

Re:this would tick me off

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy sounds like a complete flake. I have had Windows 2000 (WinXP without Luna) running for over a year and have never had to reinstall it. I wonder he has obsessive compulsive disorder to reinstall that much? It is completely unnescesary.

*yawn

[b_pretender]

This isn't news. We've known that they were going to do this for a while now. OEM's, especially HP have never been particularly friendly or supportave of things such as repartitioning and what not.

Every time I would call Dell Desktop tech-support, they would tell me to run a command from a boot floppy that would restore the computer to an as-recieved state.

That's not really *support* for the problem. IMHO it's a last resort. Not something that Dell, HP, home-user-OEM should be using all of the time.

Anyways, this rant lasted too long and I probably no longer have first post.

Re:*yawn

[jidar]

"That's not really *support* for the problem. IMHO it's a last resort. Not something that Dell, HP, home-user-OEM should be using all of the time."

Unfortunately, a nuke and reinstall is about the only option in most cases. Typically a user calls and says "My computer is locking up..."

Oh boy, good luck figuring that out Mr. phone tech support guy. Even if you can trace it down to a single program over the phone, you're probably just fixing a symptom caused by another problem.

The truth of the matter is, a lot of problems can be solved eventually, but -very few- of them can be solved with less than having an on site tech working for a few hours, and that sort of support simply isn't reasonable to expect from consumer level equipment. If you want that sort of service then go to your local computer repair place and pay for it.

And I'll be honest here, I work in a computer repair shop, and more and more often we are seeing machines come in that simply can't be fixed short of a reinstall. It's gone from maybe 10% to i'd say around 40% in the past 3 years. Windows is just getting worse and worse all the time.

Re:*yawn

[aka-ed]

Unfortunately, a nuke and reinstall is about the only option in most cases.

That is a cop-out.

I am a tech support guy at an ISP. If we could rely on a recovery CD instead of real troubleshooting, life would sure be easier. It is very, very rarely that we have to tell a customer to go to his computer vendor.

The vast majority of issues that come our way, even those that seem at first rather complex, are resolvable over the phone by a good tech (granted, most people who call us can at least boot their OS, so that is some advantage for us).

Of course, on those rare occasions when we do make a referral to the vendor, we know exactly what will happen. Within 60 seconds, the question will be asked "Do you have your recovery cd?"

Re:*yawn

[scumdamn]

The command was probably scanreg /restore or something like that. It means that if the problem went away and then came back that you were probably reinstalling a piece of software that was actually causing the problem.
Computer companies can't really afford to hire a bunch of people who could actually figure out the problem and fix it, so they train stuff that takes care of all the big hitters and cross their fingers and hope the third-party program that probably caused your problem doesn't get reinstalled.
Also, when they ask what you've installed do you tell them every single application? Do you fess up about the warezed copy of Photoshop? Do you admit that you tried to install Oilchange or some such shit and that it failed? Probably not.

Re:*yawn

[jidar]

We weren't talking about ISP tech support. The vast majority of the calls you get are Internet related, almost all of which are easily solvable.

Funny you should mention that, since this computer repair shop where I work is also a computer store and an ISP. I started as the computer repair guy but now I'm the Network Administrator and I spent my time as ISP phone support as well.

Trust me, ISP calls are far, far easier than computer repair center calls.

Re:*yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a HUGE difference between supporting connectivity issues and general computer problems. I'm a student who is paid to live in a dorm and give computer support to the ~750 other residents in the complex. The connectivity issues can almost always be resolved easily because it's simple to find the problem. The only time you need to reinstall or such is if the tcp/ip stack is completely and utterly messed up. Now, when they start complaining, "my computer is running slow," or "it keeps crashing," and the problem is not easily solvable, just reinstall. It's not worth their time or mine to spend fixing the problem.

Re:*yawn

[linzeal]

Any good tech support person should have the tcp/ip stack files on hand so he can extract them from the windows cabs and even better write a script to do it. Listening to people bitching because they lost there "settings" or background pic ain't fun.

Re:*yawn

[Fembot]

Whats more iritating is the Packard bell recovery cd's which

a) refuse to install if u change motherboards
b) format the hard disk randomly too

Re:*yawn

[Tony-A]

But what about the customer's data?
Microsoft Window's recovery: guaranteed destruction of all customer's data.
Linux recovery: I've used it to recover 3 gig of data from my boss's hosed new XP laptop. (needs NTFS read-only module).

Windows is just getting worse and worse all the time.
I think you're right.

Re:*yawn

[PriorMagician]

Given the reliabilty factor inherent in PC use today isn't it a cop out to suggest a reinstall as anything but the first option?

The real problem is that the people answering the phones aren't (usually) trained in any sort of fault diagnosis - only punching symptoms into a knowledge base and regurgitating answers. When past experience shows that 99% of suggested reinstalls cure the problem for any given symptom and the fact you are essentially dealing with call centre operators who need to get you off the phone and the next customer on, its inevitable - so why the drama in giving backup cds? Surely this saves the company in the long term!

Re:*yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

ISP "support"? been there, done that. That's not really support, actually. It all comes down to "can you connect and open a web site and chech email". If not, reinstall browser, email, try different modem strings etc. If you can, that's it, we are done. That's a piece of cake, dude.

Now like others said, good luck resolving "just crashes" stuff, or "crashes only when I do this-and-this-and-this". Given the amount of crappy and incompatible hardware, plus the ever-growing number of idiots who shouldn't be let close to computer, that's impossible on economically reasonable terms. It's impossible over the phone or email since sooo many idiots don't know what they are doing or just ignore your directions.

I tell the guy to close all other programs, he says done, still crashes, so I tell him send MSINFO report, and there it is, showing 20+ pieces of crap running. You can't work with such retards. Most problems would probably be fixed if a technician came in person, but that's not economically feasible, sorry.

In short, go buy a clue and don't bash others when you don't know what they're talking about.

Re:*yawn

[aka-ed]

I understand that os issues are tougher than tcp/ip issues. But that doesn't mean we don't see OS issues.

We do restore the registry for some issues, troubleshoot third party conflicts, resolve gpf's and ipf's. We do see systems that seem to be on their last legs, and often enough are able to help these people over the phone. Users aren't very good at distinguishing OS and TCP/IP issues; and there aren't many OS issues that we can't try to fix, with some success.

If we can't resolve an issue and it's OS-related, we do refer, but that's rarely. Anybody that gets referred to an OEM, generally are going to get their system restored. Even when we know that issue can be resolved with new drivers or a registry rollback.

Excuse me for thinking that it's a cop-out, maybe I'm wrong. But why even bother offering "OS Support" if that support begins and ends with a restore?

Re:*yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

It's evident that you've never spent any time in a tech support "trench" while the incoming calls explode around you. As one who has and has survived more than a few years, the "reinstall the OS" mentality is akin to thinking that as soon as the shelling stops the war will be over.No the attack is just beginning!
If you can posture yourself with a customer who by tone of their voice knows how to boot up and shut down a pc, then you need to inform he or she that the issue is not so much with the OS (exception Win Me)but by the amount of sw that gets thrown onto the OS that doesnt use virtual memory correctly. When the customer goes to open another application there just ain't enough of it to go around and the customer's pc crashes. Hence there is a need for software updates or patches to correct this issue. Within 15 minutes a tech should be able to tell an end user to check his resources, open up any application and let it run for 15 min. The end user should then shut down the software app and recheck the system resources. If they started with 85% and end up with say, 77% after closing the app. a check of the software website or a call to their help desk is in order. If you spin the issue away I guarantee another call from a now homicidal maniac who is a wee bit harder to deal with the next time.
It's either that or start including parachutes for all new pc's being sold.

Re:*yawn

[innocent_white_lamb]

But what about the customer's data?

From the point of view of warranty and "warranty support", the customer's data is completely irrelevant. The computer is guaranteed to work "as it was on the date it was sold". Once the computer has been re-imaged (or whatever) and it boots up to the initial screen, that's it. That's the way it was when it was initially sold, and that is the way that it is guaranteed to work for x period of time.

In real life, the average customer's data (assuming that he does more than play Quake) is or should be more important to the customer than the fact that he has a working operating system; you can find a working operating system anywhere, as it were, but you can't find a new copy of Aunt Minnie's last email to the kids or your last six months worth of financial statements. Too bad, though, as none of that is covered by warranty; it wasn't "there" when the computer was sold.

Re:*yawn

[AgTiger]

> Unfortunately, a nuke and reinstall is about the only option in most cases.

I ran into a problem recently where on a windows machine I have to look after, the system resources kept dropping (and not coming back) as the user loaded and unloaded programs throughout the day. They complained about having to reboot at least once or twice a day just to reclaim the resources.

It turned out to be a spyware program that was causing all the problems: "Webhancer".

I installed Lavasoft's "Ad-Aware" program on the user's computer to safely remove Webhancer as well as a bunch of other crap. "What's that? I never installed that!" was repeated many times when looking at the list of forty-or-so odd programs Ad-Aware came up with.

Anyway, in this case, Ad-Aware got rid of the offensive unapproved crap, and the system got a lot more stable on the next reboot. No reinstall needed! :-)

Re:*yawn

[eam]

I just had a user request assistance with Word 2K. All menus & toolbars had disappeared. We hadn't encountered this before & my desktop guys spent most of a day struggling with it when one of them found an item at www.microsoft.com about a bug which corrupts a registry key which screws up the word menus & toolbars. He fixed it & all was ok.

The next day I heard that the user had complained to administration that we did nothing to correct her problem until the end of the day. I immediately ordered the staff to refrain from trouble shooting PC problems & instead reimage the machine. Reimaging the machine takes 10 minutes (at most) and solves everything but hardware problems.

I still haven't decided if we should give the users a chance to back up their data files before the reghost ;-)

In the past two years we've gone from primarily Macs to exclusively Wintel PCs (several hundred). In the same period our staff has been reduced by two. We've tried to convince Admin that we need more people, but it just isn't going to happen. Unfortunately, troubleshooting has become a luxury that we can't afford. Along with this some users are outraged that we insist on standardizing on one model of PC.

straight from the factory to you...

[spacefem]

I never would have bought an HP anyway, sometimes I think anyone who isn't building their own computer isn't smart enough to know to re-install their OS every so often just to keep their system clean.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[AKA da JET]

"sometimes I think anyone who isn't building their own computer isn't smart enough to know to re-install their OS every so often just to keep their system clean."

Now thats a false assumption. I didn't build my computer and I format the drive and re-install my OS once every couple of weeks. Mainly because my little brother screws things up on it, but thats another story.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[matthewg]

Someone who's smart enough to build their own computer should be smart enough to use an OS that doesn't have to be reinstalled every so often just to function properly.</troll>

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

amen. there's more to life than wiping out your machine just to ensure you have the correct dlls and registry settings. Also, while I'm typing this, there's a banner ad for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Yo - Taco - just cause you're getting married, does that mean you can't pay a little attention to whom you all are selling ad space?

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[sconeu]

Good point. I didn't build my current machine. I've been there, done that with my previous machine. I decided to pay a little extra to have my local shop build it from my specs. Doesn't mean I'm stupid, doesn't mean I don't know my way around the innards of a machine. I'd just rather spend that little extra time playing with my kids.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont you install all the shit you want, then make a disk image and hide it on cd or another hard disk.

Faster than watching the every so slow Windows 4-hour install routine.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[Jucius Maximus]

The only way I feel comfortable using a computer for my own work and enjoyment is to build it myself from quality parts or to have it built by a trusted supplier ( NOT a big company.) Then I set up all partitions, OSs, etc by hand.

This way, I know that if anything goes wrong, I know exactly what is in the computer and how everything was built, and that if the house of cards should fall, I have the knowledge and parts to build it again.

It makes me uncomfortable to work on a system where someone else built part of the house of cards in a way that I do not know or understand. If it breaks, I am dependent on that party of rebuild that part for me, and they may not be available or want to do it.

This is probably the root of what bugs us about not having recovery CDs, the Windows Product Activation, etc. The crucial part of the fragile house of cards that is your computer setup cannot be rebuilt by you alone. You need something from the manufacturer or a product activation key from someone who, when you need it, can do whatever they want to you because you need what they have.

As soon as any computer user realises this reality, it will be another goal against ignorance, and will reduce the number of hassles in their computing lives.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[2nd Post!]

So many orthogonal concepts in your short single sentence.

Capability to build a computer != capability to install OS
Clean OS != reinstall OS

Of course, it's an empty statement from me since I can build a computer from scratch, install an OS of many sorts.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[cscx]

Yeah, word. Too bad I ended up reinstalling RedHat more than I ever did Windows.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[neuroticia]

Reinstall it? Why? It's much more fun to edit the Registry and sort through the files. =] Also saves *so* much time locating backups and reinstalling software. I've got my system the way I like it, I don't want to restore it to the original configuration. Ick. Plus, with all the patches you have to download you're looking at a few days of downtime just to get a working system again. MUCH better to know how to clean up a running system.

-Sara

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[neuroticia]

So learn how to use e2fsck. ;)

-Sara

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[jgerman]

Must take a while to line up all those transistors in the IC packages. Not to mention producing the materials needed to make the trransistors. You did say from scratch didn't you?

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so insanely jealous of your immense penis.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[PurpleFloyd]

How old are your kids? If they're over 10 or so, putting together a computer with them might actually be a fun and informative thing for the family to do. It sure was for mine!

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[sconeu]

The other thing that bugged me about not having original media, but a recovery CD (enough that I gave them the $10 for the OEM media) was that I wanted to install the Win2K Recovery Console. Unfortunately, you have to run WINNT32 from the CD, and guess what's not immediately visible on the recovery CD?

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[lowe0]

my guess is that this man will never own a laptop

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[cscx]

Maybe if Linux didn't mount its FSes async as default, there wouldn't be such a widespread problem.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[flafish]

Sometimes the price of the complete computer is less than the sum of what you would pay to get the parts and the labor to put it together. HP could have shipped a recovery cd and a dvd that would have had all the stuff on it to reload the disc image. I intend to complain about mine as it is equipted with a 120GB HDD with no way to split it without destroying the backup if PM doesn't find it correctly.

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[thumperward]

Goddamn right it's flamebait. Two years ago the idea of getting credit on PC parts was completely ludicrous, which meant that the only way I was getting a new PC was in one big Packard Bell-shaped chunk.

On top of that, have you ever TRIED installing XP? AOL is more difficult to use!

- Chris

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[fyonn]

yeah, I paid the local shop extra to put a computer together to match my specifications. I paid for all the parts I wanted in the machine (2xp3, abit vp6, 512meg ram, 40g hd, etcetc) and I have them one single solitary instruction. just one. I pointed out that I had 3 ide devices (HD, dvd and zip 250) and I had 4 internal ide interfaces. make sure each ide device gets an interface to itself I said.

a week later when they had finished the build (a week? it's half an hours work followed by a day of burnin testing) and did they do it? did they fsck.

why did I pay that extra money again?

sometimes it's worth building it yourself no matter what.

dave

Re:straight from the factory to you...

[geekoid]

I hear ya, but I can't find a shop that know how to build one to my specs.

Won't affect corporate customers much

[jACL]

Any large corporation builds a standard image and ghosts it down to workstations anyway. Most places don't want the end-user to get their hands on the original install media due to the support issues that arise.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[Wesley Felter]

Large companies don't buy Pavillions, so I don't see the point.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[my_second_fish]

Particularly in the case of HP. That was the whole reason for their line of computers like the Vectra, the ePC, and the Brio. In fact, HP Product Specialists aren't even allowed to mention HP Pavillions to business customers. The mentality is that, the "business" desktops come with software bundled/installed to allow the use of HP's desktop auditing software.

Also the ePC and Brio's have incredibly small cases, and I can even come floppy-less for that "added security"

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[Anonymous Coward]

...and I can even come floppy-less for that "added security"

Well, if you do come with your floppy, do wear one of those little floppy-condoms, it will provide a little more security, but not as much as if you came floppy-less.

I won't even get into mounting your floppy...

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[shessel]

At the same time, though, if a large corporation simply asks HP to supply one or two copies of the media for their support personnel, I'd bet HP would be happy to comply -- provided they're an HP shop.

It would go a long way in developing those ghost images, since you'd probably want to be able to get rid of any factory-specific settings/utilities that you may not want the end-user to have (such as a non-standard virus scanning utility). Or, *cringe* Solitaire.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[labratuk]

Quite true. In fact where I worked once they were overflowing with cds. There were about 3 or 4 large (ie- I could fit in them) boxes full of NT4 cds and licences in the back room.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[Knightmare]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, don't be a tool. Most places don't have the workstations shipped directly to the workers either. Which would give them ample time to decide what the end user gets.. you know like whether they deserve the nice mouse that came with the system or the one with the nervous tick off the admins desk.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[Shelled]

Last I heard, Microsoft wasn't allowing companies, at least not my place of employment, to ghost images.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[DaveHowe]

Some do. The Vectras are basically the same motherboard and other internal components (you lose the remote management stuff, but most companies don't bother with that anyhow, having bought a solution from Microsoft or Novell) If a pavilion is noticiably cheaper, then it makes sense to go for it - particularly if you are buying two or three hundred at a time.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[CrabCakeJimmy2k]

That's a frightful but common sight in many large IT shops. You see you have to keep those little books with that certificate on the front in case Uncle Bill and his auditing monkeys come to town. Those are your licenses and you have to have one for every installed copy you have. Even if the install is one of the dozens of extras you have on the shelves in the back (yeah, the ones that aren't even plugged in). We have 5 boxes of them, each box easily weighs 35 Lbs. That's alot of licences. We have 750 workstations here, in 3 different configurations. If there is a software problem we have a wonderful bootable image that fixes everything in under 3 minutes. 90 percent of our support time goes to management (which is only 4 percent of the staff) because they have no frickin' clue how to RTFM.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[Tony-A]

Well that kinda blows the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) argument.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[skt]

On the old Windows 95/NT books, I always tear off the front page with the hologram and just keep that part. The rest of the book gets tossed in the trash can. I figure that the hologram should be sufficient if there is an audit. Of course now with Windows 2000, the only thing that I have to keep is a little sticker.. much easier. Good or bad, it is usually attached to the physical computer it was purchased for so that there are no more books to keep.. I guess if you worked in a computer lab or something you might want to keep the stickers in the back room, in the case that some student were to steal the windows 2000 license :)

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[CrabCakeJimmy2k]

We wanted to just keep the covers, but the suits in legal said we have to keep the whole thing. The cover would be good enough, but they like to be safe.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[v4sudeva]

Last I heard, Microsoft wasn't allowing companies, at least not my place of employment, to ghost images.

And last *I* heard, there was nothing they can do to stop you, except refuse to give you support for that particular machine under your existing support contract.

So don't tell them. Pretend your machine wasn't ghosted, present your problem, and if it comes out one way or another that the machine was ghosted, thank the tech and hang the hell up.

My last gig at a fairly sizable company (~35,000 users) was largely spent replacing the then-current ultra-flaky Ghosting process with a honest-to-gosh, real-live dynamic install. That is to say, an NT Unattended Install. If you've never seen one of these, they're pretty cool. Our work allowed you to

1. walk up to a prospective workstation,
2. insert a certain floppy,
3. reboot,
4. answer a dozen questions off a nice little DOS menu (things such as: future workstation name and domain administrator username [with respective password encrypted and then squirrelled away on the floppy])
5. reboot again, and
6. come back in an hour to make sure nothing crazy went wrong.

If nothing crazy went wrong, you'd now have a machine with the approved OS, with all corporate security and usability policies applied, plus whatever apps were specified through the DOS menu -- Lotus Notes, Office, PCAnywhere, IE6, integration with Microsoft's SMS, IBM's PCom, whatever, all configured to meet that particular geographic region's specifications. Pretty sweet.

And it worked on a huge number of combinations of hardware. Last time I remember looking at the compliance chart, there were about thirty machines (laptop, desktop, and a few handheld types) interoperating with almost as many NICs (ISA, PCI, PC Card -- Token Ring and Ethernet).

Of course, this took several years and substantial from some of Microsoft's top consultants to build and (almost) perfect, and suffered a number of false starts. About the time I was ready to seek other employment, there was a rumble around the company that imaging was going to come back, which sounded patently ridiculous at the time, but is maybe less so with some of the more modern imaging packages.

Either way, I learned a hell of a lot there -- and I have a feeling this sort of top-down control would be easier and more fun on Unix or Linux.

Just another fine example of technology you won't get to play with working at your local mom-and-pop ISP, or in all but the most ambitious basement tinkering.

Whoa. How did I get started on all that? Anyway...

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[heliocentric]

You only have to keep those licenses if those are the ones for each box. I worked at a site where we had to destroy the incoming little NT kits since we had a site license for X number of machines and we were using that licensing for our workstations. It was a weird setup since we were supporting another company and that company had the X workstation license - they purchased new machines through us and some came with kits, some didn't (each manager selected what line of workstations they were going to get for the department from a list we approved covering many manufacturers).

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[screwtheNSA]

I just gave away a Vectra! What a piece of SHIT that "machine" was! I hate the mfg. methods used by HP with the voltage regulator module in the upper left sied of the main board(off the backplane that is). It's held in by tabs you depress for module release. I'd HATE to have that pop out when the system was on, since THAT is the 3.1 Volt regulator for the P-II CPU. It did have the Intel chipset(forget which version though), but the sound card(that crazy diagonal goof-board) but they DID have a Matrox 3D card with 8 Mb of V-ram, which was okay for HP to include. You break the tabs on the cover when you attempt to flip the side latches and actually remove the face, so the front cover now does not fit snug and rattles with the fans running! I did like the ducting of the CPU fan, I saved that for a project I have, and fitted the CPU with two direct-blasting air movers bolted to the heat sink. Tha machine locked up a few times under WIN98SE, and even DOS, Pascal and C++ caused errors along with the ctrl/alt/del screen popping up telling me that Windows Explorer is "not" responding...HUH? I wasn't even running IE to start, so WHY did THAT message pop up in the first place? Anyway, HP is ranked right along side Packard Bell in the quality standings...JUNK(junque)!

I swapped out the Matrox vid card and left an SIS 1Mb video card in for somebody else to play with.

Since when is 640 X 480 resolution SVGA?

*Xerox and Wurlitzer have merged, they are now making reproductive organs*

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to give the bad news, but as long as your company buys the proper volume license we a Microsoft don't give a flying fuck if you ghost a machine.

~~~~
:) Seph (:
Windows XP Technical Support

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[CrabCakeJimmy2k]

Hmmm, I woulda thought that the individual licenses fron the NT kits would augment your site license.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[heliocentric]

I was a weird thing dealing with a company supporting another - the one we were supporting had no contract to us to provide licensing.

Re:Won't affect corporate customers much

[DaveHowe]

Agreed - much of the layout on the Vectra series cases should be junked and started over. The Vectra VL tower however is very nicely laid out indeed - makes swapping components in and out a breeze - but is so designed around the custom motherboard that replacing the motherboard can be a nightmare.

Borrow one

[spt]

Just borrow a CD from a friend.
It's owning a valid product and activation code that makes the operating system legal now, right?

Re:Borrow one

[mrzaph0d]

i've found that sometimes the restore CD from the manufacturer contains specific drivers that are either hard to find or impossible to install correctly. took me a week to figure out which order to the drivers on my NT laptop before so that it would be stable.

Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Starship Trooper]

The hardware companies are eager to cut corners wherever possible to save a buck in producing their increasingly shotty, slipshod products. In the end, the removal of recovery media in favour of "recovery partitions" conveniently eating away at the consumer's free hard drive space is just another way of putting more cash into the company's greedy coffers. This has nothing to do with Microsoft's licencing or Windows XP or anything like that.

You can rest assured that, even if they were shipping Linux on these machines, they would probably still opt for providing as little actual installation media as they can get away with. Gateway has always tried to take advantage of consumer ignorance to push their below-average workmanship, which is why they're slowly slipping down the tubes. All the more reason to buy a decent system from Dell, or even better, Apple. You get what you pay for.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[feldsteins]

I'm old school: I want a CD containing the same thing I would have gotten if I'd bought it in the store, period. Alas, I can't think of any OEM that does this nowadays.

This has nothing to do with Microsoft's licencing

Actually I think the part where HP wouldn't let someone just call and order the CD, but rather had to quiz them on why they needed it speaks directly to this. It does have something to do with MS agreements.

...or even better, Apple

Amen, brother. Actually I happened to notice the other day that the Mac OS X 10.1.2 CD that came with an iMac at work is actually the same CD you'd get at a computer store. But even they do not do this reliably, making OS CDs machine-specific.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Gameshow Bob]

just another way of putting more cash into the company's greedy coffers.

Hardly adding money to their coffers. HP is LOSING money in their PC division. They are trying anything and everything to keep that business afloat so they don't have to completely drop PCs. The entire PC market has almost no product differentiation anymore so companies that can shave off the most production cost win; the others fall by the wayside.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire PC market has almost no product differentiation anymore so companies that can shave off the most production cost win; the others fall by the wayside.

Which is why Dell and Apple, both of which provide full installation media and great support, are the only remaining profitable hardware companies, mm?

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it does have something to do with MS. MS sells OEMs a reduced cost version with additional limitations. These are things like "not for resale", "can only install on one computer ever", etc. An OEM version typically costs less than 1/4 of a retail. It's generally cheaper than even the best bulk discount on the retail version. If you wanted a less limited version (retail) the OEM would have to pay more for that and it would cut into their profit margin. But the OEM figures most people won't know the difference and gives you the cheap crap instead without any choice.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[BrookHarty]

Wrong, linux isnt a vendor its an OS. Any vendor who wont chip in 10 cents on a install/recover OS CD, should go out of business. Just because the vendor is big, doesnt make them good. The smaller companies who do linux workstations give sets of cds, with lots of extra applications.

I personally hope more consumers get burned by this. Until the average joe computer buyer discovers the heart aches we have to deal with, nothing will change. How many times have you heard, "Why are they picking on poor Microsoft, they are just doing business?"

-
It is hard to be brave, when you're only a Very Small Animal. - Piglet, Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Papineau]

Maybe they wouldn't ship actual installation media, but they should be able to provide a way to download it from the Internet. I know RedHat (and probably Debian) are installable with only a bootdisk via the net. Ok, so it won't work for 56k, but then nothing will except actual physical media.

Actaully, they might even be forced to do so because of the GPL: if you get binairies, you're entitled to the source code. Do you think they would install the source for the whole OS+GPL'd apps on the harddrive? I didn't either.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Pandora's Vox]

I'm old school: I want a CD containing the same thing I would have gotten if I'd bought it in the store, period. Alas, I can't think of any OEM that does this nowadays.

Which, IMHO, is why it's best to a) buy from a locally ownes, small business, or b) (preferable) to build your own. a) is just as good, if not better, an option for the beginner as is buying from one of the big guys.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[jgerman]

Your first paragraph is dead on, up until your concluding sentence, this DOES have something do do with MS licensing. When you pay for a machine you are paying for that Windows license, not HP in fact they are probably making a profit off of brokering the license between you and MS, you have a right to that disc.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[ZxCv]

Actaully, they might even be forced to do so because of the GPL: if you get binairies, you're entitled to the source code. Do you think they would install the source for the whole OS+GPL'd apps on the harddrive? I didn't either.

The GPL says that they'd have to make source available if they provide binaries. This doesn't mean they would have to install the source; only make it available. So, they could simply provide a postal address where you could send away for copies of the source, and that would suffice.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Papineau]

At least you don't have to tell why you want the source to rebuild what's installed.

And in the case of a postal address, it means that CDs are ready (or can be in a timely manner).

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[ZxCv]

It doesn't have to mean that CDs are ready, only that they are willing to make you a copy of the source as long as you send them the media.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Wyatt Earp]

From your comment about the Mac OS X and 9 CDs that come with Macs, I get the feeling you are trying to say they are machine specific, thus an iMac CD won't work in a PowerBook.

While that was true in the past, I find that the current 9 and X CDs will work in all Macs that can take the OS.

At work I use an iBook OS 9.2.2 and OS 10.1.2 CD to do everything from Beige G3s to PowerBook G4s. The custom software is in the other bundled CDs. Ever since the Summer of 2001 I've found the CDs that ship with hardware to be machine independant.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[Shelled]

If I get this right, you're saying that a CDROM with the OS is more expensive to manufacturer and ship than a CDROM with a recovery partition? Does the recovery partition use higher quality bits?

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[AndyChrist]

Either that, or they've got books printed up already.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[feldsteins]

While that was true in the past, I find that the current 9 and X CDs will work in all Macs that can take the OS

I hadn't realized. I guess that explains my experience with the iMac OS X CD the other day. Thanks for the heads up :)

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[evilviper]

You've already gotten hosed by other people on your other statements, so I'll ignore those issues. I'd actually like to address your hardware bias.

It's rather amazing how people always have their systems that they think are absolute crap, and others they concider the cream. IT gets interesting when you put two people in a room with strong opinions on their favorite manufacturer, where one's favorite is the other's bain.

The simple matter of fact is that every manufacturer out there now has their low end system, and their higher end systems. The low end systems are crap, and the high end systems are rather nice.

You think Dell is the best out there? I've run into Dell systems that were designed more shoddily than cheap Compaqs. Not to mention I had bought 50 Dell monitors, 5 of which caught fire. That was LONG before the recall... About a year in fact IIRC. Then they have the wonderful Notebooks with batteries that like to overheat and light up the Laptops.

Apple has had it's share of problems as well. The older iMacs we designed to be fan-free, but there wasn't enough ventilation so many of those ended up with overheating systems and toasty components. The same rules apply. The iMacs were the low-end, the High end G3,G4 haven't had any problems that I've heard of.

Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different?

[fyonn]

so why keep this going and can their calculator division which was mking money hand over fist?

dave

Need CDS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Restore your system here, CDS fresh and cheap!

Why not CD's

[quantaman]

I don't see their problem with shipping half a dozen or more CDs. When I got my computer it came with 6 cds just for MS worksuite (none of which I use since I got staroffice;). Cds are much cheaper than hard drive space and i'd rather just have them give me a bunch of image files and rip the cds off that. I wonder if the recovery cds could be used to pirate windows XP, if so I suspect that is the real reason for their reluctance.

Re:Why not CD's

[PoiBoy]

From my experience recovery CD's aren't very useful for pirating.

I downloaded an evaluation copy of VMWare and planned on using my Dell recovery CD to install NT. The system complained that this copy of Windows could only be used on Dell computers. I tried a friend's WinXP recovery CD's for her Compaq laptop, and got the same error message. I guess recovery CD's are manufacturer specific.

Re:Why not CD's

[BrookHarty]

Makes upgrading your harddrive a bitch too. But then, your going to buy a new computer from the same vendor in 2 years right?

-
Let's have some new cliches. - Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)

Re:Why not CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

How many CD's does it take to install an OS? 6? 10? 17? Excuse me but this is an OS, not a space shuttle. Why, for heavens sake should any OS take multiple CD's to install? This is a frigging Operating System! It is supposed to be the platform that other software runs on. You shouldn't need a power machine with a 850 mhz processor and 256 mb of RAM just to run an OS! I will not 'upgrade' my computer (happily running Win 98se & Office '97) for some bloated, buggy piece of crap. Please! Give me a lean, mean, stable OS. I don't want AOL or your pissy little media player. I just want my computer to run cleanly and reliably. Less is more.

Re:Why not CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be that this is because the existence of a recovery disk would make it harder for Microsoft to transition to a new business model (allowed for in their changeable license) of making you pay periodically to continue to have access to your computer (and your own data). This would be easy with built in remote control (for "updates") of your computer. If your system grinds to a halt waiting for you to send more money to MS, would they want you to be able to bypass their autodestruct mechanism by restoring your system?.

What do you expect?

[the eric conspiracy]

A last year the company I work for bought a couple of Presarios with 4 GB drives. 1.5 of that rather limited space was set up as a recovery partion. While you did get a recovery CD, the first thing that the CD did was to install that recovery partition.

The fact is that Microsoft has a monopoly, and one of the first things that this means is that Microsoft can do whatever it wants to crew their customers.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, hello? Did you buy a Microsoft Presario? It sounds like Compaq bent you over and now you want sympathy on /. for it by complaining about M$.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather, it sounds like its Compaq that's bending over, and handing vaseline(R) to Microsoft. In other words, MS is most likely forcing this on the OEMs.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

thats odd, they arent forcing it on gateway, dell, sony, or ibm

just compaq & hp, the two shittiest big-name manufacturers left.

Re:What do you expect?

[the eric conspiracy]

Um, hello? Did you buy a Microsoft Presario? It sounds like Compaq bent you over and now you want sympathy on /. for it by complaining about M$.

I didn't buy it - my employer did. Like most companies they feel some crazy need to kowtow to MS. Personally I find I can do everything I need to without paying a fee to MS. Except perhaps buy a computer without MS installed on it - and if this digital content protection stuff goes any farther, it may well become illegal to buy and run a computer without MS Windows installed on it.

As far as the Microsoft Presario, it might as well be. Microsoft is the one that sets the licensing terms - they won't even let the OEM change the layout of icons on the desktop. Compaq and so on are stuck with whatever MS demands of them.

I really am amazed by the level of Microsoft Love that is surfacing on /. Criminy, some of the more recent posts have made comments like "Microsoft Popularized the PC" BULLSHIT. It was IBM that developed and standardized the PC. Compaq had MUCH more to do with popularizing the PC via the clones they produced than Microsoft ever did.

All Microsoft did was stamp out all their competition from the early days of the PC. Now the are trying to rewrite history - 'Microsoft invented the internet' (yes there are people who believe that) and 'Microsoft invented the GUI'. Makes me feel like upchucking.

Now that Microsoft has all their desktop competition stamped out, and the DOJ put to bed they are turning the screws with XP. Soon Hailstorm will kick in and you won't be able to pay for anything on the Internet without MS getting a percentage.

I'm glad my kids are the ages they are now. I can see a future where every baby born is immediately signed up for Passport from which an annual MS Windows license fee is automatically deducted.

George Orwell may have been a few years early, and he didn't anticipate that it would be a corporation that would be watching.

Re:What do you expect?

[digitalunity]

True, true.

A quick look-see through old patents shows that Xerox is the true inventor of the GUI. Is this correct? And DARPA created the internet to connect universities; accurate?

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to Compaq et al to make their PC clones. True, seeing as how Compaq clean-room reverse-engineered the IBM PC-BIOS (the chips were all standard), they may well have been able to pull the same trick on DOS if IBM had bought it outright. Nonetheless, Microsoft did have a prominent, if limited role in the early days of popularizing the IBM PC clones. But for my generation, Apple probably did more to popularize the PC (generic term) by positioning their Apple IIs in schools.

Re:What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

the company I work for bought a couple of Presarios

What the hell did you expect?

the presario is a consumer machine, not a corporate machine.

If you'd shelled out the few bucks to get a Deskpro, you wouldn't have had any problems.

Jesus - how many restaurants buy $10 hand mixers from Walmart and then bitch because they don't last as long as the $500 models from the restaurant supply firms?

The right tool for the right job.

Re:What do you expect?

[the eric conspiracy]

But Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to Compaq et al to make their PC clones.

Hmmm... Microsoft did not have an exclusive ownership to "DOS" at that time. They bought a license to something called QDOS from Seattle Computing, and resold it to IBM in one of the greatest coups in history. IBM then customized it, and supplied it with their PC's as IBM PC-DOS. One of the burning questions at the time was whether you were better off running PC-DOS or MS-DOS on your clone system. Many people I knew preferred PC-DOS.

Seattle Computing still held a license to QDOS, so it would have been quite possible for Compaq to go to Seattle Computing as well.

The fact of the matter is that without the deal with IBM to supply DOS for the PC, Microsoft would probably have been a low-end language shop that petered out around 1984 or so. IBM made Microsoft, but unfortunately did not have the corporate vision to keep the evil genie in the bottle.

The day Gary Kildall went flying is the saddest day in the history of the computer industry.

Re:What do you expect?

[Pig Hogger]

The fact of the matter is that without the deal with IBM to supply DOS for the PC, Microsoft would probably have been a low-end language shop that petered out around 1984 or so.
IBM made Microsoft, but unfortunately did not have the corporate vision to keep the evil genie in the bottle.

No, it is just evolution in action: the big dinosaur got bit by the quick-acting mammal.

The day Gary Kildall went flying is the saddest day in the history of the computer industry.

And we would now be vilifying Digital Research instead of Microsoft...

Short comments zone...

[dozing]

Forgive me for being blunt, and I realize I'm only saying the same thing everyone else is thinking, but:

This sucks!

HP Bites

[Inthewire]

This past November, my father's computer crashed with multiple hardware failures.
We took it to Best Buy and spent two months going back and forth with them over the problems. They'd send it out for repair and it would come back broken.
In January the decided to just give him another machine. They settled on a HP...can't remember the model...off the shelf.
I set it up for him, and booted it. And it hung. Tried everything I could think of. No good. I called tech support, and was told to restore the thing from the partition. No good.
Next day, I went with him to the store to get it fixed. The desk techs tried to boot it, restore it, etc. No good.
After an hour or two of futzing with it, they grabbed another one for him.
Wiser now, he asked them to check it to be sure it ran.
It didn't.

Hours later, they had pulled the entire stock (4 of that model, + the one we had returned) and tried to run them. Nothing. Defective shipment? Who knows.

They gave him a similar Compaq and sent us on our merry way.

Re:HP Bites

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they forgot to plug the power cord for their bench into the wall?

Re:HP Bites

[Anonymous Coward]

computing 101

rule #1 NEVER buy ANYTHING valued over $20 at best buy. best buy comes from bizzaro world, so their name is actually the antonym of their business model.

another good rule of thumb is never to have anything with moving parts repaired at best buy. their technicians are actually droids programmed to say whatever they can to get you to leave.

Re:HP Bites

[MaxVlast]

My understanding is that best buy is such an awful place to go that all of the employees feel like players caught in a poorly-written tragedy.

I, personally, wouldn't want an army of disgruntled people taking care of my expensive hardware.

views from an Ex-HP support technician

[Anonymous Coward]

"For many years, one of the primary reasons for support calls have been people who have lost their recovery CDs," says Bruce Greenwood, North American marketing manager for HP's Pavilion line.

Absolute bullshit - i worked on the HP Pavilion support line (thru an outsourcer - www.stream.com) for 3 years - the majority of calls were due to crappy inferior integrated hardware(onboard sound/shared video memory), dodgy OEM drivers, and general windows flakiness due to sub-standard componenets.
For example, the 88xx series had major DVD playback issues - software decoder was a HP customised OEM'd piece of shit.
Researching this issue, i got a 'warezed' copy of the decoder that was sold directly via the vendors web site - no problems...
And the 31xx series (3 years ago)had a WD hard drive that was "guaranteed" to fail after 8 months of use. And would WD take them back? Would they fuck.... we had to let them fail, then replace them. Of course when the new hdd failed, you were SOL as they were outta warranty.
And for the rumor that returned Pavilions were cannibalized for new and/or repaired Pavilions.....

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[Anonymous Coward]

i would bet most of their calls are more along the lines of...

"how do i open this goddamned case!?!?!"

we call em pandoras case here. you gotta pull the levers, jiggle it this way, pop the side with your fist, all while prying with a screwdriver.

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[delus10n0]

True dat. Having to upgrading the RAM on some Pavillion (I don't remember the exact model number), you had to pull a lever and jiggle the front of the case off, then slide out the drives (and the hard drive on a seperate rack) just to get to the motherboard/RAM. Insane.

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on, my Pavillion from a few years back had no problems... Aside from my non-onboard card wouldn't fit into the MB, and even with jumpers set properly, the MB insisted that the card on the MB was the one to use.

Had a Seagate drive on the sucker, had no problems with it. I can vouch for WD problems - had three of their drives fail now, total (Well, one was my father's.. One of the replacement drives after that, a seagate, was DoA.

My FIC mainboard for my last Athlon box was utter crap - to such an extent that I'll never buy from FIC again. The 'ATX' board was larger than that of an AT, produced unacceptable heat on its own, and caused random restting of the box.

Sometimes, it's hard to tell if a specific vendor is the one using crap, or if it's the hardware companies.

They do *not* make hardware like they did back in the day. I can hurl my 416 mb Seagate against the wall, pick it up, and use it no problem. Can't do it with anything made within the past three years. :P

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[Jester998]

Actually, I recently serviced an HP system; the customer wanted a good NIC (as opposed to the integrated POS) installed. I had to remove the freakin' power supply, literally unscrew it, disconnect it from the motherboard, disonnect power from all the drives, etc just to access the PCI slots... I agree: Insane.

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

You're absolutely right. I can't count the number of WD hard drives I've seen fail in the past few years. Pieces of shit, no doubt about it. But this is just in line with the general crappiness of hardware in the last few years. I got a monitor in 1995 that had dark spots on the screen. Returned it for a good one. Got another monitor in late 1999 that had its convergence shot to hell, replaced it with another one where half the screen was a lovely shade of purple. And don't even get me started on shitty modems. God, I've had to try to support those things. How anyone expects to get a stable connection out of something they paid $10 for is beyond me. And once these pieces of shit get to consumers, who has to support them? The modem makers? Yeah, right. You're lucky to find any kind of support phone number for many of the low-end vendors. Nope, the ISPs get to take these calls. Ditto for Internet Explorer and Windows's network components. MS makes the cash off these programs, yet when they start flaking out, the providers get the calls, not MS. And to return to hardware for a minute, has anyone actually had a successful tech support call with a motherboard maker? I have a friend who was only able to get someone to speak with him after calling the board maker's office in Taiwan. Luckily, he speaks Chinese.

I really must say that the state of computer support these days just plain sucks. And speaking of HP, a friend's mom bought one of those things a few weeks ago. She was having modem problems so my friend called HP. The tech had her open the case and find the modem. He had her pull it out, then told her to...and I'm not making this up...plug it back into the big green thing that everything is plugged into. When she replied, "You mean the motherboard?" he said, "Is that what it's called? Oh cool!"

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[Anonymous Coward]

plug it back into the big green thing that everything is plugged into. When she replied, "You mean the motherboard?" he said, "Is that what it's called? Oh cool!"

Bull shit, cock gobbler.

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[screwtheNSA]

I saved my "old" Rodime, 10Mb HD just for historical reference. It's a 5-1/4" full height drive. That, and the Seagate ST-225, 251Rs and so on WERE battleships compared to the fragile junk that's out today. WD used to be a good drive "name" to own and use, but after many crashes and having more bad sectors than good made me rethink my stand on their quality, like some mid '80s Fujitsu drives...GARBAGE! I also have a few ST-225s and such on my shelves for comparison with the thin, lightweight paper drives on the market today, what was worth buying then, surely does not hold up now. Raise the storage capacity, lower the weight, make the controller even more susceptible to static and have the audacity to make the hardware out of inferior materials makes me want to hurl!

Reminds me of U.S. auto makers of the 1970s all over again!

Living in a rust belt made me see just how BAD fords REALLY are and how fast they rust, over any GM/Chrysler products! A firend of mine has a 1999 Taurus, it's got perforations by the wheel wells on the driver's side, and the hatch is holed just under the center of the window. I told him he should shoot a few pics and begin a product liability suit against ford for producing faulty equipment that could be judged unsafe due to how rapidly their products rust here. I have a 1990 Chevy Corsica that is 100% rust FREE, even spending its whole life OUTSIDE, it's still clean, and there's no underbody rusting either. My 1990 Plymouth Acclaim is the same way, no rust and clean underbody. WHY can't ford make a car that lasts past 2-3 years before rust eats your money away? PCs are the same way, cheap products sold for super high prices.

I have my flame suit on, so light 'em up and let's get to it now!

Re:views from an Ex-HP support technician

[Anonymous Coward]

My sister has one of those 3100 series computers and her hard drive crapped out... not once, not twice, but 3 times.

As a side note, that system of hers seems to have "issues" with most brands of ram. I had tried to upgrade the memory on it but gave up when it wouldn't boot with the new ram in it.

I called one of the vendors (value ram I think) and they said that system wasn't supported. Now I know why.

It's a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a good thing they're trying not to provide the winxp cd. Perhaps they're tryin' to get people off that sucky os called xp!!

Moral Idiots?

[Alien54]

That is what I first thought.

I suspect that they do not want to have all that extra XP media out there. especially when there are tools that apparently can generate XP activation keys oby the dozen on a daily basis. [See this report on the Register for Details]

What I suspect is happening is that MS is muscling in on IP Ringhts in some way on HP via various aggreements, as seen by example here with Sony.

Re:Not necessary

[jabberw0k]

What if your hard disk crashes?

What if a rogue program wipes the partition table?

What if you install Linux, wipe the disk, and later decide (why, I can't imagine) to revert to XP?

...Client of mine just bought a new HP and when it got to the Product Activation part, he had me wipe the whole mess and install one of the many (new, boxed, shrink-wrapped) Windows 98's he bought as "insurance" last year when the BSA was rattling its sabre.

Long overdue

[whereiswaldo]

Unfortunately, I have a Packard Bell computer. It's the same old tune in this story, except with HP. I didn't get an original Windows 98 CD with my machine which really ticked me off, but fortunately I had access to a real Win98 CD so I didn't bother making a huge fuss.

The first thing I did with my new computer, fortunately, was try out my new CD burner and burn the folder they had on there with all the Packard Bell drivers on it. I reformatted my machine (I hate default installs), then installed with an original Win98 CD. The drivers weren't there! So, I pulled out my trusty CDR which I'd just burned and found the drivers in there after some searching.

To make a long story short, not providing the original CDs is hardly a solution for most customers. Many questions are left unanswered:

- What if the hard disk crashes?
- What if I decide to install another OS on my machine and then want to put back the OS which came with my system?
- What if my partition table gets corrupted?
- What if I want to configure the hard disk into a RAID?
- If Windows really comes bundled with the computer, why don't I get the original retail CDs? Almost gives an illegal or unjust feel to the whole deal.

Anyway, '98 is long gone on that computer and I'm happily running Linux on it today. I'll never buy from Packard Bell again (for the CD issue, and for the absolutely poor tech support), and the chance of my buying from HP is pretty slim as well, at least till they get this mess straightened out.

Actually, I'm more of a Dell fan, but they've been getting under my skin, too. When configuring the options for your new computer (online store), you don't get to pick "I DO NOT want Windows or MS Office/Works bundled with this computer" as an option. I am forced to pay for something I probably won't use. This practice has got to stop. Hopefully the DOJ can give us a hand on that one.

Re:Long overdue

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have a Packard Bell computer"

I would never admit that.

Re:Long overdue

[Graymalkin]

Your "what ifs" are answered simply by: your OEM doesn't want you doing anything with your computer that doesn't in some way involve software they put there. The reason is they don't support this third party software and thus make no money selling support contracts for it. PC manufacturers make their money from selling services to people, not hardware. If you buy hardware from them with no service contract (which in reality many people don't do) they would rather not have your business. This pertains to restore disks in that don't let you do a "fresh" install of an OS. Looking to the DOJ to try to put PC OEMs out of business is ridiculous. No matter what software they stick on their systems be in Linux or Windows they are not interested in just selling you cheap pre-assembled hardware. If this practice stops expect many hardware vendors to close their doors pretty quickly. You don't remove a profit point from products in a low margin market without screwing yourself over badly. If you just want hardware build a system yourself or buy a bare bones system from a local vendor (or any vendor selling bare bones systems).

Re:Long overdue

[scumdamn]

Actually, you won't buy another Packard Bell because they're out of business. NEC bought them and then killed the name. Packard Bell was always a joke but I have to admit, they made the best first computer possible. Everyone who bought a second computer knew exactly what they wanted:
Anything as long as it's not a Packard Bell.

Re:Long overdue

[blibbleblobble]

My parents bought a Tiny computer, despite all campaigning to the contrary (they have still not used the DVD player, or the scanner) - recovery CD formats the hard drive (i.e. it's not a real O/s CD which would let you keep your data)

When I got my PC, I had the local one-guy shop build it, and I still phone him for help occasionally. (Ever try that with BigPCStore Ltd?) - the problem is, most people will never find out how crap their PC is until it's too late. They're being treated as consumer products now, which means that companies with "brand recognition" (i.e. full-page adverts in the Times) get clueless companies buying PCs from them.

"We're not allowed to talk to anyone who mentions linux" a guy in PC world told me the other day, as I quizzed him about the "Windows 95 or later" requirements of each of their modems.

Re:Long overdue

[jsprat]

- What if I decide to install another OS on my machine and then want to put back the OS which came with my system?
- What if my partition table gets corrupted?
- What if I want to configure the hard disk into a RAID?

What if doing any of the above voids the warranty?

A short but ugly warranty story:
Once I had an OEM computer (P90, a while ago). The video controller failed a couple of months after I bought it ($2800 US, beleive it or not). I called the OEM, they said I had the option of bringing it in for warranty work or replacing the video card myself. They sent me a video card, I put it in. About 6 months later, the PCI controller on the motherboard failed. I called for warranty service and took the computer to an authorized service center. I was promptly told that since I opened the box, the warranty was void. I argued, but to no avail... I lost.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is crappy service. It is also industry standard, from what I can see.

Now I have a relationship with the owner of a small computer shop in my area, and buy all my parts and computers from him. I'm not concerned if I have a problem with anything, because he knows and trusts me. What I worry about with this small company is - How much longer can they afford to stay in business? That's a risk I'm willing to take for the great service.

Re:Long overdue

[xtremex]

All these talks about support...I've never had to bring my PC into support. I have no idea what it's like..I get whitebox, basically build your own. If the CDROM fails, I pull it out and the Computer Store hands me a new one. I have 10 PCs in my house that are whitebox. If something fails, I send back the piece of hardware thats causing me a problem. I have a friend who had to send his ENTIRE PC to the company and had to wait a MONTH to get it back!! Thats what name brand gets you??? Screw THAT!!!
I can swap all the hardware I want. I dont break any warranties. Only the PARTS are warrantied, which is MUCH better if you ask me. Got a Harddrive that has bad sectors up the wazzoo? I hand the hard drive to the guy behind the counter, and he gives me a new one. 5 minutes to remove the HDD, 5 minutes for him to get a new one of the shelf, and 25 minutes to restore from backup :)

Re:Long overdue

[jsprat]

I have no idea what it's like..I get whitebox, basically build your own.

Which is exactly the point I was trying to make. I got burned once, never again. I just buy my parts only from somebody _I_ trust.

Re:Long overdue

[mlsemon2]

And it's a gift that keeps on giving. Every time someone unloads a computer on me, it ends up being a Packard Bell. One day, someone will unload an old Pentium-class IBM PC on me so I will know that God loves me. It's certainly too late for karma or the law of averages to work kindly in my favor...

Re:Long overdue

[geekoid]

don't forget to add Kathleen(570?) to your list.

Re:Long overdue

[JuliaNZ]

Packard Bell is still available as a brand in Australia. No idea why. (And no, I don't own one!)

I actually work for HP...

[tonhe]

and I really dont like their policy on this topic at all.

Yes, I do work for HP Pavilion support. I lost my job at a Linux based router company, moved, and took the first job I could find. anyway...

HP's policy is that we included a copy, on a hidden partition with the computer, the specs state the fact, and so does an insert in the manual. The software (including hp learning adventure, which the recovery cds that are now available for purchase DO NOT include) would be 17 cds long (why the didnt use a dvd, i dont know). 7 of those cds are available now, and the only thign you have to do is call 208.323.2551 option 1 and give your info on the computer, get it registered and tell them that you deleted the recovery partition and need some recovery cds. They will charge tho though (which is the kicker) $9.95 for standard shipping (overnight is only 16) for the CDs.

All in all it sucks.. and I know a lot of the customers hate the policy, but most of them dont mind paying for them because they did get a copy when they bought the computer, and most of the realize that they did agree to the license in the manual, and they did have 14 days to return the pc if they wernt happy.

Please dont hate me because i work for hp, i dont like it any more than you do... *sighs*

Anyone know of any good IT jobs in the lexington, KY area ?? Email me if you do.

Re:I actually work for HP...

[spt]

would be 17 cds long

So about 10Gb of the disk consists of a hidden partition containing software I will hopefully never need to use? And worse, containing software I don't want. Most of the software bundled with computers nowadays is pretty useless.

The product specs don't make this clear. it says "Huge 80Gb disk"; is this a 90Gb disk with the 10Gb missing. Or is it a 80Gb disk with only 70Gb actually available?

Re:I actually work for HP...

[tonhe]

what really sucks is.. its a 80gb disk, but only 7 of those cds are in the recovery partition.

If you do a "destructive recovery" ie, Format and Recover, you lose the other 10 cds which are on the user partition. (The HP Learning Adventure Crap, tis demo Sw from The Learning Center)

Tony

Re:I actually work for HP...

[my_second_fish]

I used to work with tonhe, albeit in a different department, the customer information section. i know with the business pc, and netserver line of products, the harddrive stated, is the harddrive issued. if its saying its 80gb, then thats what it is, and any bit of space yoinked for recovery purposes, is yoinked.

so yeah, yet gettin screwed.

Re:I actually work for HP...

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone know of any good jobs in the Lexington, KY area ??

Hmmm. You seem like the type who is qualified to shovel out stables. You get to pet the pretty horseys as a perq.

Re:I actually work for HP...

[Anonymous Coward]

that non-SPAM-armored email addy is going to cause hell for you, now that your post is (Score:5, Informative)

Re:I actually work for HP...

[Suppafly]

I wonder why they don't send them via usps media mail. I mail cd's that way all the time, and I seriously doubt it would cost half of that to mail them. Its rediculous that HP expects customers to pay for something that they should have received in the first place.

Re:I actually work for HP...

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, it's kind of funny that he anti-spammed his email address in the header of his message, and then posted his clean email address in the body of his message.

Somebody get this guy a Hotmail account!

Re:I actually work for HP...

[ewhac]

...most of them dont mind paying for them because they did get a copy when they bought the computer, and most of the realize that they did agree to the license in the manual, and they did have 14 days to return the pc if they wernt happy.

Ha ha, very funny. The "license" is not relevant to the discussion, since it is not a valid or binding document (much less ethical).

If you want to call it a replacement media cost, then fine. $9.95 is quite reasonable for seven CDs (although, it must be asked, what the heck are you loading on to the machine that requires seven CDs worth of data?). And yes, HP should consider switching to DVD-ROM if they're really tossing around that much data.

Schwab

Re:I actually work for HP...

[Doctor Faustus]

Yes, I do work for HP Pavilion support. I lost my job at a Linux based router company, moved, and took the first job I could find. anyway...

Please dont hate me because i work for hp, i dont like it any more than you do... *sighs* Anyone know of any good IT jobs in the lexington, KY area ??


Be careful. This sort of post sounds like a really good way to get fired.

Re:I actually work for HP...

[gotan]

i think only few people would miss the "learning adventure", either they searched frantically how to shut it off when it greeted them in much too cheery tones after they first switched on their computer, or they're through with it and really don't want to see it again. Those with a clue probably deleted it themselves, when they realized during a quest for free hd-space that there was a folder eating up 7GB of it for obviously nonessential stuff.

But how does it fill 7GB in the first place? Did someone film the screen and put it there as hi-res mpegs? Also doesn't XP come with it's own learning software anyway (and advertising for all the other nice Products by Microsoft)?
--

So in other words...

[The Pi-Guy]

...when I repartition for Linux, I've gotta wait a couple of weeks for HP to decide that my hard drive really is dead, and then another few weeks to get the discs out here. Smart HP. Time to go pull out the newsgroups, or otherwise... out of curiousity, anyone with a newish Pavilion and a DVD Burner? I'd pay ya $5+media for a DVD with the reco partition on it... ;)

--pi-guy

Is this really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal...so HP chooses not to ship legit copies of XP CDs with your PC. Just go to your friendly local pirate. He'll have a copy of XP, ME, SE, in addition to a wide varity of games and applications to make your computing experience more enjoyable.

Re:Is this really news?

[Harumuka]

MS ain't waiters, we don't tip 'em
Treat XPs like Windows take 'em hope and rip 'em
Scan the back cover, do the quality inspection
Put an ad in the paper in the classified section

Re:Is this really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, this person is right.

HP and MS have conspired to make pirated software not only cheaper (always was), but now they make pirated software more convenient than the real thing.

They had to work at that.

Re:Is this really news?

[Harumuka]

I second that. Here in Kiev, illict discs overshadow legal copies. Most consumers, including myself, find it cheaper and easier to buy a pirated CD. HP's move is only good new for the pirates here.

(Of course it's not like we ever needed any help. The only competition ever was when Universal released the "Women" cassette and reasonably priced it at $2.)

Think about it for a minute - Kiev has five CD factories. We produce polycarbonates (CD-Rs are nowhere to be found - this is the real thing) 24/7. The process is highly streamlined. We sell XP for $2.50 and make an immense profit. If Microsoft did this, they would too, and they would be competeting directly against US.

HCF

[Graymalkin]

If you're a vendor it makes sense not to package installation media along with your product. While two slashdotters shit themselves at the suggestion just now it is true. Selling a low margin product doesn't make you a whole lot of money thus you need to sell the extras like a support contract, you know the thing a saleman tries to forcibly ram up your ass? If you give a customer the ability to fix their computer qualms with little hassle you are asking to be put in operational red. There's a percentage of people who can fix a computer at least marginally, statistically people who don't know how to fix their computer know at least one person they can bother because their "printer got a virus and the power light doesn't come on anymore", the sort of people who inspire ever so funny Tech Support from Hell banter. These people often work for free or at least for much less than it costs to pay a "professional" (sic) to fix their problem. This ain't no good for suppliers of service contracts like OEMs. If Grandma decides the pie chart of her disk space has too much blue on it she is going to start hitting the delete key, nevermind she just deleted all the DLL files her favourite program needed to run. The purple wedge got bigger. If she can call up grandson/daughter to come over to fix her now useless program that comes up with twenty missing file errors who merely inserts an install disk and is done with the whole mess the OEMs just lost out on some lucrative nickel and diming. A recovery partition or special recovery disk can at least obfuscate things just enough to garner a couple extra support contracts from people. OEMs also want to get software back on systems they spent a pretty penny for to put there in the first place. This might be useless crap but they just want some eyeball time on it.

I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[AKA da JET]

I'm still 17 and don't have enough money for my own computer yet (sniff). But, my problem with new compouters is all the pre-installed junk thats on them.

Right now I'm running a 350MHz Compaq Presario. When I first got it, it had all sorts of pre-install crap-ola. Stuff like AOL, Prodigy, and a bunch of trial software I could care less about. And it didn't come with a OS cd, just a "recovery disk", so If I wanted to re-install the OS, I had to use the Recovery CD which would re-load the pre-installed software I worked hard to get rid of in the first place. Later on the disk mysteriously stopped working and my little brother got some virus on it that caused Windows not to work. I ended up borrowing a friend's OS CD he got with his computer and I've had no problems since then.

When I get enough money for a new PC, I'm gonna ask to make sure it comes with an full-install OS CD.

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[Anonymous Coward]

When I get enough money for a new PC, I'm gonna ask to make sure it comes with an full-install OS CD.

And they will kindly tell you to piss off.

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[Anonymous Coward]

And I will kindly piss on. (them)

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[xtremex]

Not if you go to your local PC shop. They'll hand you a PC with a blank harddrive. If you want Windows XP, they'll GLADLY give it to you, for $150. The shop by me has Linux CDs (Mandrake) for free on the counter. The sign says "Unleash the power of your PC..Take One"

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[Flossymike]

I used to work at a computer shop where it was standard practice to include the CAB files on the hard drive and point the Registry at the folder containing them. This did take up some hard drive space, but was very convinant for the customers. Is this a bad thing too?

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[Kamel Jockey]

This did take up some hard drive space, but was very convinant for the customers. Is this a bad thing too?

Not at all, hard disks are so big now the the space issue isn't a big deal anymore. Plus, its extremely convenient when you are adding new hardware to a machine and you don't have to fiddle around looking for the original Windows CD.

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[AKA da JET]

My concern would be if the user desires to completly format his/her hard drive. I have a friend who started reading /. and all of a sudden wanted to "feel the power" of the open source revolution. He trashed his windows partition, and did a fresh install of Mandrake. Everything was going fine until he realized he missed some of his old Windows Programs. Fortunatly, he had a Windows 98 CD to put it back on. But if the only way he could re-install windows was to use CAB files that used to be on his Windows partition. He'd be in a jam. What I'm saying is that I think Computer makers (well, at least ones who bundle an OS with their system) should always include a full-install disk of whatever OS the computer comes with.

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[AKA da JET]

LOL, at a furniture store around where I live, they give you a free Mandrake CD with every purchase. :)

Re:I'm not a big fan of "recovery cd"s

[Anonymous Coward]

. Later on the disk mysteriously stopped working and my little brother got some virus on it that caused Windows not to work.

Creditability Alert!!!
His little brother got a virus on the Recovery CD???

VERY TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

indeed :)

Bloody hell, 4G worth of recovery data

[(H)elix1]

does not need to go on a hard drive. Last time I looked you could stuff 4.7G or so of data on a single DVD ROM, and I suspect most new boxes could read that DVD!

Oh wait, this is about saving the couple bucks it would take to include recovery disks. Most call centers cost the vendor a couple bucks every time you call. I understand a recovery disk that is tuned to the hardware from the store - not that a hardware junky like me cares for that, but whatever... the cost metrics will usually correct these issues.

network boot image

[maxwells daemon]

I install Linux off the network. Maybe HP could make the same available for Windows XP.

Re:network boot image

[AKA da JET]

You mean have Joe Home User with a dial-up connaction download windows XP off the internet? Yikes, that would take forever. Then again, I do have some friends who have done that via IRC. :-/

One more note onto that.

[tonhe]

The company that laid me off did me a wonderfull job.

twas ImageStream Internet Solutions.

email the president
email the guy who laid me off (CTO)

They laid me off the day I came back from vacation, and 2 days after my birthday, with no warning, What do you normally do on vacation ? Spend all your money, THANKS A LOT !

Ok, my gripe is over,

Tony

Re:One more note onto that.

[/dev/trash]

They laid me off the day I came back from vacation, and 2 days after my birthday, with no warning, What do you normally do on vacation ? Spend all your money, THANKS A LOT !

OH no not right before your birthday!!!!!

Re:One more note onto that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Email them and tell them what, exactly? For all we know, you're a raving lunatic and they were well justified.

And why would someone get fired right after a vacation? Usually it's because, in the employee's week-long absence, it becomes obvious to everybody else what major problems that person has been hiding, trying to save his own ass. I've seen it happen.

Oh, and another thing... probably not too wise to ask for an employment favor on a board in one message, and in the next message play the disgruntled employee by asking us to harass your old bosses via email. "Hey, let's hire this guy! He won't invite total strangers to harass us as long as we don't fire him!" Riiiight.

Bastards!

[ncmusic]

This article just made me angry. I'm not sure why. But quite simply comsumers are fucking morons, and HP and MS are taking advantage of them. There is NO reason what so ever that every HP computer shouldn't just come with a full version of XP on cd with the computer; and maybe another cd with the drivers for proprietary HP harware. *grr*

Damn recovery CDs

[slashdot.org]

Last year I spend several days to extract the drivers and utilities from the Sony Vaio CDs. Never do I want to get as angry as I got during this process.

It was my understanding that we bought a machine INCLUDING an (albeith inferior) OS and a wild variety of software (we specifically needed the FireWire stuff). Well, apparently not so.

The pre-installed Win2K was installed on two partitions using FAT32. It was impossible to get a clean single NTFS partition with the recovery CD's. They simply created the same C: & D: FAT32 partitions. I mean WTF?! Why do they think we ordered the Win2K version for an extra $150??

Even better,- if you installed 2K from a full CD, allowing you to create an NTFS partition, the bundled Sony Viao utilities/programs wouldn't install anymore, claiming a corrupted configuration (and being so nice as to recommend to recover from the provided recovery CDs). So for example, the special utilities needed to get certain keys to work couldn't be installed. So here you bought a $4K piece of crap that you can't use the way you want it to.

I finally hacked my way around it, but I ain't touching a Viao with a ten feet pole anymore.

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[BrookHarty]

Really, thats the same with all laptops. They all use some sort of recover CDs and/or hidden paritions. Just buy the laptop for the hardware, and get another copy of the OS. Your life will be much easier if you dont rely on the vendors installed image.

BTW, the vario is a good laptop. One of the best out.

-
USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population. - David Letterman

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[beebware]

In the IT department where I work, we support around 30 laptops - mainly either Dell Latitudes or Sony Vaios. The Dells, while really needing a clean install every 6 or 12 months, work perfectly. We are able to do a base install of Windows 2000 Professional on them from any Win2K CD we have laying around (OEM, Dell-branded, seperate purchase etc etc), and we just need to use the 2nd Dell CD for the correct drivers (display, inbuilt network card if fitted etc etc). If we can't find the drivers, we just shufty down to the Dell website, enter in either the model of the laptop of the service code (a unique identifer on every Dell machine), pick the drivers, download 'em, burn 'em to CD and then do a merry little dance.

Sony Vaios, however, are a different story. They *need* installing from the original media they came with (and are very unhappy if you use the copy of Win2K you keep in your drawer for ease of reach). We had a Sony Vaio that came pre-shipped with Win98 (urgh), so we decided to upgrade it to have a 'standard OS' across our network. We brought yet another 2K licence and then attempted into install 2000 onto it. Failure. It didn't pick any of the hardware (display was v.low res, no network connectivity or modem: so no Windows Update for us!), and a trawl on Sony's website showed that the laptop brought in 98/99 had hardware that was 'no longer supported by Sony and no Windows 2000 or NT4 drivers are available for this hardware'. Since we had lost the original '98 CD it came with (have you seen the size of our software safe!?!), we couldn't even roll it back to 98. So now we've got a Sony Vaio stuck in 640x480x256 resolution, an inbuilt unused network interface and a additional PCI network card. Sound is poor on it as well. Practically unusable, but we can't do a thing.

Dell technical support may be a bit poor and expensive (they were going to charge us over 150UKP to replace a bust LCD display, we got an 'alternative supplier' to replace it for around 60UKP), but at least they make sure you can do a clean install whenever you want.

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

> Since we had lost the original '98 CD it came with (have you seen the size of our software safe!?!), we couldn't even roll it back to 98. So now we've got a Sony Vaio stuck in 640x480x256 resolution, an inbuilt unused network interface and a additional PCI network card. Sound is poor on it as well. Practically unusable, but we can't do a thing.

Sounds like a good excuse for a Linux portable testbed. The machine's no good for anything else, and this has a good chance of salvaging it. Think your manager would go for it?..

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[Hollinger]

Actually, if your VAIO recovery disk is like mine, all you had to do was get the "Sony Setup Application" reinstalled manually (hunt for it on the first Recovery CD) and everything else will work perfectly. For the record, I have a Vaio F580K laptop, originally running Win2k, now running XP with no problems.

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[beebware]

We tried running Linux on it, but couldn't get the correct drivers for them. No details of which chipset they are running and the Linux 'auto-detect' system doesn't recognise the display, 'nipple' or touchpad (only external mice). Saying that, when we installed Mandrake on a Dell box, it took around 4 hours to find the correct drivers for that display so... Oh well.

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[slashdot.org]

My point was though that you loose the drivers, utilities and other software that also come on the recovery CDs (and which you paid for IMHO).

Even though most of the software is crippleware, some of it is useful (like the CD recording software) and not only that,- they advertise and market all this as being part of the product that you buy.

I don't like to pay 59 bucks for Roxio when I thought the thing came with the software already.

Re:Damn recovery CDs

[slashdot.org]

Unfortunately that didn't work for me after I installed 2K with a NTFS partition.

And the sucky thing is that all the programs where stored in some proprietary format on the CDs, so you couldn't just run the installer for each program,- you have to use the Sony installer (which wouldn't run on NTFS).

What I did was first do a recovery. Then run the installers for _all_ programs through the Sony installer. It creates a temp directory where it copies the installer and files for the program you are installing. So I copied those files into an other directory (since they are deleted as soon as the program is installed). After I had all the original install programs and files I burnt my own CD and installed 2K with NTFS.

I hate Sony. I condemn these kind of policies. It's bad enough that all the software is closed source, but this just takes every bit of freedom away from controlling a machine you payed big bucks for.

HP is feeeding them a line of......

[Chanc_Gorkon]

CRAP! That's right crap. I have not heard of anyone else doing this yet. XP has been out long enough that you'd think something would have been said if this was a Microsoft policy. No, this is something that the brain dead drones working for Carly Fiorina has thought up of. If this was the case HP, then how come I see all kinds of OEM CD's on pricewatch being sold ;).

This is why I would probably buy from the Powerspec line of PC's at Micro Center. AFAIK, they have and will continue to ship standard OEM CD's and they don't have restore CD's to begin with either. I was also told by a sales guy at Micro Center when I bought my last whole PC that I could upgrade anything I wanted during the warantee period. I didn't end up doing that but when I decided to upgrade a bunch of stuff and move to a new case, they had used hotglue on the IDE cables right where they go into the drives. No big deal but it did kind of suprise me a little. Micro Center also seems to have some decent hardware in their new machines. Not the lastest stuff, but not econo 15 dollar graphics cards either. They models I saw in the paper included Geforce 2 MX based cards, and some even had TV out. Their whole packages and even their external devices and acessories are decently priced, but I find their build it yerself stuff seems to be a bit higher then it should be.

Re:HP is feeeding them a line of......

[(H)elix1]

I didn't end up doing that but when I decided to upgrade a bunch of stuff and move to a new case, they had used hotglue on the IDE cables right where they go into the drives. No big deal but it did kind of suprise me a little.

Gluing the IDE cables is pretty common really. When boxes get tossed about, they can come out. As a side note, it usually prevents the Vendor from returning defective drives when the customer RMA's a box. A (little) nod to the customer anyhow...

Re:HP is feeeding them a line of......

[sconeu]

they had used hotglue on the IDE cables right where they go into the drives.

And you're RECOMMENDING these guys??????

Re:HP is feeeding them a line of......

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Yes. If I had seen hot glue spread all over the cable and on the mainboard, then I would be concerned. No, there was just a teeny spot of hot glue on each side or the connector where it inserts into the drive. In fact, it looked like they used a special tip on the hot glue gun because the spots were smaller then you'd think they be.

In any case, I said yes I would reccomend them. They even included a manual for the mainboard they used. How many companies do that? Actually, there was documentation for every piece of hardware that came with the system, mainboard, zip drive, network card, dvd drive, modem, soundcard....documentation all there as well as standard OEM install CD's for all apps preinstalled on the machine. Granted, this could have change since I bought the machine, but I doubt it. In fact, I even mentioned Linux when I was buying it and he said oh yeah lots of folks are doing that....and really, the only few problems I had with Linux on this machine was the winmodem (lucent chip) and the soundcard (aureal and not their fault that aureal went out of business). Everything else pretty much worked. Sure, not as nice if you had built it yourself, (like what I have now) but nice all the same.

Re:HP is feeeding them a line of......

[sconeu]

Actually, I did something similar when I bought mine from PC Club (Thousand Oaks, CA). I mentioned that I was going to install Linux, and asked them if they could do 2 20G partitions instead of a single 40. No problem. Only thing was, they had the OEM "recovery" Win2K CD. For $10, I upgraded to full standard media. Again, had docs for everything.

Re:Not necessary

[AKA da JET]

"What if a rogue program wipes the partition table?

What if you install Linux, wipe the disk, and later decide (why, I can't imagine) to revert to XP?
"
LOL, thats exactly what happend to me. I didn't mention it in my previous post, but I also needed the OS CD to revert back from Linux :)

I wouldn't have a problem with this IF....

[extrarice]

If the recovery partition is WRITE PROTECTED. My mother in law's computer got hit with SirCam, and by the time she realised there was a problem (she's new to PCs) all of the system files on D: (the restore partition) were infected. She had to order the restore CD from the manufacturer (for the record, it was Compaq) for $10US.
BYOB (buld your own box).

Re:I wouldn't have a problem with this IF....

[BrookHarty]

For my mother in law, I'd order her a used packard hell and setup AOL.

(-;

Re:I wouldn't have a problem with this IF....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now thats funny!

Re:I wouldn't have a problem with this IF....

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't be write-protected because it is used as storage for user backups

HA.. Looks like HP is adopting Compaq's evil ways!

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

Most of my computers have been homebuilt. But.. my latest and greatest box, a Compaq 7000 series box
with 1.3GHZ AMD processor and 256MB DDR RAM is
an exeption. I bought it from Circuit City 2 years ago when they had a price posted at $850.00, and that's not with any MSN discount, that was the price. So I bought it since I was pricing out the parts to build a new box up.. and I was standing at $1400.00.

Well the Western Digital 60GB drives that ship with the box are JUNK! It turned out that it was
full of bad blocks. The problem reared it's head
when I decided to load Linux with the ReiserFS filesystem on a seperate partition.. well the box
failed after 1 week. No Install CD media. None at all from Compaq. Just an emergency CD that is lame. The Emergency CD is worthless if your drive is trashed. I had to purchase the media for $30.00. Also, Compaq sucks when it comes to marginal equipment, so.. I formated the drive and
marked the bad blocks. I also formatted the partion that had Linux and checked for bad blocks.
I had to use their lame install media.
HP is now adopting the same practice.. UGH!!!!!!!!
My next box is going to be a homebrew job again,
at least with a homebrew I can overclock. Comaq's
BIOS is LAME!

Nice try

[slashdot.org]

Readers who called HP to complain were told that XP was so big that half a dozen or more CDs would be required to deliver all the recovery files.

So they are giving up 4 GB of diskspace for a recovery partition. I really wonder if the marketing material mentions that when they list the size of the harddisk.

IBM do it too...

[mesagsx]

Late last year, my company bought an high-end IBM workstation (dual CPU, PCI RAID, SCSI, 2 GB RAM etc...) to be a Windoze box (what a waste...).

Guess what? It shipped to us pre-built, but with no recovery CD or Windoze media at all. IBM wouldn't even sell me one. They told me I had to go to M$ and
buy direct.

I don't geddit. Anyone know why this is? I mean, I can't believe that on a $10k machine, they'd try a save the single buck (or less) that the CD cost....

Re:IBM do it too...

[CunningPike]

Yep. I bought 8 laptops recently. They came with Windows 2k preinstalled and a "recovery partition". The laptops didn't have very big disks, and the recovery partition took up some 20% of the disk.

I needed them to dual boot (actually I was all for ditching Win. but was overruled) I also assumed that the missing CD was easily remedied.

I had a long talk with various people at IBM. They tried to palm off various ideas, including the idea that the version of W2K on the laptops isn't a full version: it was a get-you-going version!!

Finally I talked to someone more in charge.
It transpires that they will send you a Win2K CD, but you have to say "my partition table is corrupt" and pay them £20.

Not really what I expect when I buy something with Windows on it. I'll not be buying anything more from IBM in a hurry.

You got the software...

[M_Talon]

Most systems ship with a CD-R now (and if you don't get one, that's just silliness anymore), so why not just burn the recovery partition to CDs?Voila, instant recovery disks. Me personally, all I want is the OS and any hardware-specific software on CD. Screw the rest of it...it's mostly marketing crap anyway that just cruds up the drive. I hate these companies that want to tell me I need all their "go to this site, they paid us" links and software. Sell me a computer with an OS, and that's it. Can't do that, then you don't get my money.

Re:You got the software...

[KFury]

"why not just burn the recovery partition to CDs?Voila, instant recovery disks."

Hardly. Burning the recovery partition to CD-R, segmenting it god-knows-how onto 17 discs does not a bootable recovery disk make. For one thing, the recovery programs have no way of knowing which of the other 16 CDs the myriad files it needs are on, but that's just for starters.

In short it's like segmenting your car with a chainsaw so you can fit it in your friends 17 cars, and wondering why it won't run when you turn the key in the chunk with the steering wheel.

Re:You got the software...

[Omega Hacker]

FYI, there is a significant difference between recovery CDs and a recovery partition. It is fundamentally impossible to "just burn the recovery partition to CDs". First, how do you get a bootable CD? Then, how do you split the files across the CDs? And tell the installer where to get the files it needs, etc, etc, etc.

Re:You got the software...

[Mr. Piccolo]

Bootable CDs are no problem. It's trying to fit 10GB on a 650MB device that's the problem.

Re:You got the software...

[Omega Hacker]

Bootable CDs certainly are a problem. Remember, this is Windows, not Linux. You can't just put a kernel at the top of the disk and let it start. The boot sequence for a Windows CD is much more complicated than it is on a partition.

Re:You got the software...

[xtremex]

That's funny..I was just going to say make a bootable CD-ROM for recovery. Tne I realized that most of the people posting here are NOT using Linux. There is an excellent ISO for Linux called Mindi. It will backup the files you want, split the file system across a number of isos and makes a bootable CD for you! Since I download shit from freshmeat every day, I have to use CD-RWs :)

Re:You got the software...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can't just put a kernel at the top of the disk and let it start. The boot sequence for a Windows CD is much more complicated than it is on a partition."

Really?

One just gets a bootable DOS bootdisk and uses a recent CDR creation program. There's your win95-XP installer. You want a fancy windows xp command mode well that will take marginally more work.

Let's not kid ourselves bootable cd's on linux or windows are not that hard. The real problem is people not knowing enough about how stuff works so that they can use a bit of logic and correctly handle things themselves.

Now running windows gui and all off a cd, there's a challenge for ya omega hacker ;-)

pi ngmeep

Re:You got the software...

[Wesley Felter]

You could do it with a tool like Drive Image, but it would be cheaper to just call up HP and convince them to sell you the restore CDs.

Re:You got the software...

[Reziac]

I understand what you're saying, but how about this:

0) burn a bootable CD which includes the most basic OS the recovery tools can run on, and the tools themselves.

1) burn the 17 CDs from the recovery partition (one would presumably have to unhide it first), keeping the directory structure intact (beyond that it doesn't matter which file is on which CD)

2) When your system needs restoring, create a partition of the same size as the old "recovery" partition, boot up to DOS, and copy all those 17 CDs to the recovery partition. (Hope you have a fast CDROM! :)

3) run whatever you'd do for a recovery.

I'm sure there are details I don't know about, and some config files might need tweaking or whatever, but surely something like this could work? Would offer an alternative for people who HP won't provide media to, who won't pirate a real installable copy of the OS, and who don't feel they should have to pay for a 2nd copy at retail.

I know people have done similar schemes to get around "recovery partition, no media" problems on similarly set up machines, back in the olden days when an installed OS would actually FIT on one or two CDs.

Re:You got the software...

[westyx]

Why should a customer have to go the trouble of burning cds and making sure they work just to fix something that they should have got the cds for anyway?

Re:You got the software...

[AntiNorm]

Most systems ship with a CD-R now (and if you don't get one, that's just silliness anymore), so why not just burn the recovery partition to CDs?

Better yet, why not just give customers the damn OS CD? Seriously, though, if I am paying for a license to use Windows, then I had damn well better be able to install it, reinstall it, change it, add drivers to it, etc. as I see fit. In other words, if I am paying for a license to use Windows, then I expect to be able to use Windows.

Re:You got the software...

[sjames]

It is fundamentally impossible to "just burn the recovery partition to CDs".

Not really. The first CD should be bootable and have just enough software to find and partition the hd (with recovery partition). Then, it loads the recovery partition from simple binary (compressed) segments from the remaining CDs. Once done, jump into a boot from the recovery partition. Thus, no need to care which disk (or disks) contain any given file. Bonus points if the disks include error recovery so that the install can succeed even with a lost/damaged disk.

That's a lot of work for one person to make one recovery set, but since we can presume that HP will sell a few, and has to update their recovery from time to time (over the years certainly), one would think they'd have managed to do it by now.

Even MSDOS had a simple backup/disk splitter utility that would fit on a boot floppy with fdisk and format + an autoexec.bat.

Re:You got the software...

[screwtheNSA]

Maybe one can take a multi-CD "player" and run it through their sound card and make up a rebuild for their system in that fashion.

Ever try it? I already have my 6-CD changer hacked for connection to my sound card here(it's a rat-shack changer, so no great loss).

Being an "output" device only, there should be no problems making it function easily afterall.

*Looking for a slot-1 P-II, 266 CPU...REALLY!*

Cost of ownership

[pheph]

Cost of ownership reports comparing Windows vs. Linux (and other OSs) often show that you spend less time keeping Windows running (I've never experienced this). Hence the saying "Linux is free if your time is worthless". However, the cost of ownership now needs to factor in many many more things.

- not having media directly at your fingertips when your system goes Tits Up(tm)
- Windows Product Activation
- .NET .nagging.

I'm surprised Microsoft has done ANYTHING to increase cost of ownership when research states thats their only advantage (compared against security, configurability, scalability, etc)

lunix

[Anonymous Coward]

You've heard all about it. It's the latest operating system to hit your local book store. Download it for "free" from your Windows based system (if you can bare to wait that long, otherwise you'll have to buy it). Red Hat Linux 7.2 Professional only $190.00! Install it on a hard disk you don't care much about! You will find that Linux sucks so bad that you are grateful I warned you!

Easy.

[Heem]

Step 1 - Return your HP (dell,gateway,compaq) to the store you bought it from, barring that, sell it for more than you paid for it on ebay.

Step 2 - Buy a motherboard,CPU,hard drive, case and power supply, floppy, etc. (substitue any spare parts you have laying around)

Step 3 - Purchase,Obtain legally for free, or Pirate the OS(es) of your choice. (i'm not the software police, i dont care what you do)

Step 4 - Put it all together. Enjoy. When it breaks, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Replace broken parts with ones of higher quality.

Step 5 - Notice all the extra money in your bank account, since you didnt pay for HP's advertising campaigns.

The point is, vote with your wallet. It sucks that HP does not include the CD of the OS you legally paid for. But guess what? Screw em. Every slashdot reader should have the technical skill to put a simple desktop system together on their own, and for the people who don't, if they are friends or people you care about, help them. Otherwise, screw them as well. Let the uninformed pay for what they don't know. We'll use our knowledge to better ourselves.

Re:Easy.

[rehannan]

Step 2 - Buy a motherboard,CPU,hard drive, case and power supply, floppy, etc. (substitue any spare parts you have laying around)

This works fine for desktop PCs. But what about laptops?

Re:Easy.

[PaxTech]

The problem is that when you put together a machine for someone, their future problems become YOUR problems. I used to put computers together for all my friends and relatives, but after a while I realized it was a bad idea.. Every time one of their kids or somebody messed something up, I got a phone call.

Now I just tell them to buy a Dell and if it breaks, Dell sends someone to their house to fix it. No fuss, no muss.

Re:Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to avoiding having to deal with "support" of a system you helped someone assemble is quite easy: Make them put it together in the first place. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach a man how to catch fish, you feed him for life. I'll gladly offer advise on hardware purchasing decisions for friends and hold their hand as I make THEM do the work - I myself don't assemble systems for people, I teach them how to do it themselves, and then explain, hey, now you know as much as me, your on your own. I can proudly say several friends of mine have grown a brain (and saved money) from this method.

Re:Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptops you still have to buy from a manufacturer pre-made. I have heard of some places that sell standard laptop parts that will allow you to build your own laptop just like you would with a desktop, but these are never as light and sleek as the offerings from vendors like IBM, Toshiba, etc... I'd rather get an IBM anyway, they've always been good to me.

You get what you pay for.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

It is not so.

This is widespread to fool people into paying more money for little added benefits.

For some money you get some benefits. Put more and you get more. Keep adding money and you reach a point of "decreasing returns", where you must actually shove a lot of dough to get very little additional benefit.

In fact, the only thing you'll sure get is a sense of having an "exclusive" thing, which nobody else can or want to have.

So, please, don't fall in this trap.

Some inexpensive things in life are indeed very precious, and some expensive toys are - ha! - just plain stupid.

And ONE more note about the CDs

[tonhe]

The reason you can only get them if you need them is, They dont have them..

They're still imaging the CDs, they didnt actually start offering them until this january 18th. We just don't have enough CDs to send to everyone.

I still dont agree with the charge for them. But all you have to do is call in and say you deleted the recovery partition.

Re:And ONE more note about the CDs

[Skapare]

Why not DVDs? Why not all the software? Why did the engineers think the drive could not fail?

Re:And ONE more note about the CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard drives never go bad, what are you talking about? Wait, what does "General failure reading drive C:", mean?

Re:And ONE more note about the CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my drive C:?

Re:And ONE more note about the CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

See:

this, this, and this Oracularity for the answer to that question.

Re:windoze

[Anonymous Coward]

You've heard all about it. It's the latest operating system to hit your appeals circuit court. Download it for "free" from your Linux based system (if you can bare to wait that long or find it on pir8 FTP servers running wu-FTP, otherwise you'll have to buy it). Microsoft Windows XP Professional only $290.00! Install it on a hard disk you don't care much about! You will find that Windows sucks so bad that you will be grateful I warned you!

God I wish I had moderator points for this parent.

It's probably the best they can do..

[David McBride]

Let's face it - CDs are cheap. It costs very little to mass produce, and they take up little space. There's no practical reason not to ship disks with the PC.

Ideally, HP (and every other OEM) would just ship a regular copy of the OS on removable media, with any drivers or what-have-you that are required for the hardware involved. You could even go so far as to have it all on one DVD.

But instead, OEMs are only shipping 'recovery' images which nuke a prexisting installation. This is surely a Microsoft-imposed constraint, not an HP one.

HP are simply trying to make the best out of a difficult situation.

Re:It's probably the best they can do..

[Anonymous Coward]

> Let's face it - CDs are cheap. It costs very little to mass produce, and they take up little space. There's no practical reason not to ship disks with the PC.

When you're a company making millions of something, that "very little" x 10**6 adds up to a large reduction in profit. All the OEMs, not just HP, hate this.

Don't be blaming Microsoft for an OEM cost-reduction innovation. MS doesn't care - no reduction in their profts if CDs do or don't ship with a given OEM PC, MS's already received their money.

Everyone seems to agree

[hyyx]

Everyone here seems to agree that the computer manufacturers should be shipping media with computers. Someone above says that IBM does this also. I have an IBM that needed to reinstall just one program. There is no media to do this with, IBM doesn't even have a copy (so they say), and so I am stuck with thier only solution: restore the recovery partition. I am not going to revert back to ground zero for the sake of one program; it doesn't even make any sense. When you buy a computer, you get licenses for your OS and all the programs, so why do the computer manufacturers have the right to control your usage of them? I own everything I paid for, and I should be able to do anything I want with it. If I get a Windows license with my computer then I should be able to reinstall the OS without the manufacturer modifications... very annoying.

Re:Everyone seems to agree

[Anonymous Coward]

My IBM works much better with Linux than NT. I daresay some people at IBM are barely even taking Windows into consideration when designing their hardware because "it should work." On the other hand, it must work perfectly with Linux after they said they would spend $X billion on it. That's my experience with my Thinkpad T22, anyway.

At an install fest

[mfos.org]

I was at an install fest helping someone put linux on a day old HP laptop. He was actually a lucky one and did get three recovery CD's. Because the partitioning tool we used, DiskDrake couldn't resize NTFS partitions without destroying them, we split the disk in half, and the used the recovery CD. It was actually well-behaved enough to stay in its half.

Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[nbvb]

To solve the problem, buy a Mac.

It comes pre-loaded with everything you need, and *gasp* Apple includes ALL the software on CD's!

They include your standard "Click one icon to reload your whole disk back to its original configuration", AND standalone CD's of all the OS's and apps on the system! And gee, they don't seem to be going bankrupt from included $.60 worth of CD's.....

Software Included

Everything is easier on a Mac.

(This from a Sun admin... who woulda thunk it.. Apple in the Unix business?)

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[ywwg]

so either you get a pc, where you can't reinstall windows, or you get a mac, where you can't touch the hardware. Or, just go to a local shop and get a quality machine with all the cds.

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[Ubergrendle]

Except... #1) Lack of software. There's not even a version of Photoshop working on OS-X yet! #2) The games are crap #3) You overpay for fixed configuration hardware #4) One button mouse? You've got to be kidding me... #5) This ain't the early 90s anymore. Quality of many of the Mac products is just as crappy now. Sorry, not a viable solution and your suggestion is barely related to the topic of this post.

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can touch the hardware all you like on a pro grade Mac (tower)...everything but the motherboard. Apple has done a pretty good job of getting away from the proprietary connectors etc. They now use standard AGP, PCI, DIMMs, and they have led the way with USB and Firewire IEE1394.

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[nbvb]

Exactly!

I don't feel "locked in" at all... I can upgrade just about anything in my PowerMac, including the CPU.... And real, working USB and FireWire are a major bonus.

And not for anything, but there is NOTHING on the market even in the same ballpark as the Cinema Display.... 22" of digital LCD-y goodness! I was always a CRT guy, shunning the LCD's, till I saw this thing. Now I have one on my desk, and the Sun 21" CRT is in the closet. No comparison.

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is Mac is way overpriced, and has slower hardware. Who wants to pay twice the price for half the performance? No normal person.

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[mystran]

..or if you know enough just forget about vendors.

You can get the components and it doesn't cost any more.. sometimes even less..

You put it all together yourself and:

• You only pay for what you want.
• You actually know what's in there.

If you fear that the components might not sync with each other just get a list of components for your favourite vendor-PC and go with that list :)

No need to buy that useless MS crap either ;)

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[IronChef]

Can't touch the hardware? Eh?

Macs have PCI slots.

Macs have IDE support.

Macs have places to put those memory chip thingies, and ports to plug in gadgets.

OK, so you can't overclock a modern Mac without getting our your soldering iron -- but it's not like they are sealed systems.

Hardware availability is an issue, I can't deny that... there aren't as many goodies, and there are a lot of $50 1-button mice for clueless Mac shoppers who don't understand the magic of USB. But it ain't as bad as "can't touch the hardware."

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

And not for anything, but there is NOTHING on the market even in the same ballpark as the Cinema Display

I could've sworn SGI made some non-shoddy flat panels. I was obviously just imagining things.

Re:Step 1: Buy a Mac.

[maxcray]

If it only ran EverQuest...

Brand-name PCs? Phooee!

[NewtonsLaw]

Anyone who buys a brand-name PC needs their head read and deserves everything (every problem) they get.

I swore off buying "big name" PCs back in 1989 when I spent a huge amount of $ on an IBM PS/2 model 70. (20MHZ 386 CPU, 4MB RAM, 120MB HD)

Within 11 months the PSU failed but was replaced under warranty.

At 14 months the 120 MB HDD died (stiction) and IBM wanted an extortionate amount for one of their proprietory replacements. In the end I simply junked the PS/2 and, for less than they were going to charge me to replace the drive, I bought a no-name clone with twice the processing power, four times the memory and a 220MB HD.

Then there was a friend of mine who bought a DEC laptop and ended up having to pay nearly ten times as much for RAM as I paid for the same amount of extra memory on my no-name clone laptop. And when his LCD display crapped out, they took eight weeks to fix it and wouldn't even give him a loaner!

At the risk of generalizing, I have to say that a lot of the money you hand over when you buy a "big name" PC goes into advertising the brand and not into providing you with better quality or service.

These days I buy good, reliable no-name clones and I know that they are:

1. easily upgradable
2. easily repaired with readily available parts
3. great value for money
4. compatible with just about every OS/app I try

The shop I buy my machines from will even sell me a PC sans Windows -- and without bitching about it! But if I do buy a machine with Windows, I get a legit copy of the disk and certificate.

Caveat emptor folks!

Re:Brand-name PCs? Phooee!

[gmhowell]

Sounds like my local white box shop. They are a ten minute drive (or less) from my work (and in the same parking lot as my wife's job:). If a machine goes down at work, I drop it off. If I need it back quick, I can get it DELIVERED by the end of the business day. No extra charge. They go the extra mile.

They were hassled about license problems once, but I don't know why. My company has bought over 100 machines from them, and every one has the hologram thingy. (If memory serves, they got some bogus '95 licenses from their supplier, so they wound up with only a few grand in legal bills).

But besides the convenience, there is one big factor in their favor: something breaks, a part is available to fix it. Everything is off the shelf, no custom BS. And by the time you figure S&H, the sales tax is a wash. Not to mention that I get certain perks available only to large HP, Dell, etc. customers: I can custom configure OS settings and so forth prior to delivery. Makes it much easier to install our apps and the latest service packs on a single machine before the drive is ghosted (and then the legit serial number is put in. Relax, I've got a massive box of WinNT CD's).

Re:Brand-name PCs? Phooee!

[geekoid]

Anyone who buys a brand-name PC needs their head read and deserves everything (every problem) they get.
great, so now everyone need to be a computer expert to have a pc?
this is not the customers fault, it is the companied fault. I can not imagine any other industry that abuses its customers so much.

OTOH I can't think of any other industry where the customer would chabge how something works, or cause a problem themselfs, and expect the manufacture to give you a new one.
If I added something to my refridgerator motor, and it stopped working, how many people would expect the refridgerator manufacture to send me a new refidgerator?
if I crashed my car into a wall, how many people would expect the car manufacture to buy give me a new car?

But if someone does something to ther computer that causes it to cease working, suddenly its the pc maker resposibility to replace the computer.

not to mention the amount of out right fraude so many customers try to pull.
I would love to see rthe numbers of how many PC get returned as not working, that have had parts replaced by customers.

Buy a Mac...

[spacedx]

It really is too bad I'm missing out on all this fun... my Apple PowerMac G4, iBook, and G4 iMac came with not only a set of recovery CDs to return the computer to its original factory-fresh state, but they also came with the actual retail copies on CD of both OS X and OS 9. These "retail" CDs will boot, allow you to partition, and install on any Mac, not just the one listed on the label. No other computer retailer comes close to this level of flexability.

Restore to full "factory functionality," or start from scratch and customize with a brand spanking fresh retail copy of the OS? It's your choice... not the manufacturer's.

Think about it.

Then they want to crack down on pirated OS copies

[restive]

There are supposedly a large percentage of Microsoft software installations that are not legit. Looking at policies like this, it's not that surprising...

Run Linux...then you can forget about MS licensing and HPs retarded policy.

Hey, HP...go back to doing what you do best...making printers.

Powerspec is recovery CDs

[alexhmit01]

We own 5 of them now running Linux/OpenBSD. 1 is running NT 4 Terminal Server (testing it out for a project, looks like a failure).

You get a Win98 or WinME recovery CD.

Other than that, the hardware is relatively standard stuff. Good luck getting drivers, you need to figure out what each piece is, as the docs suck. Additionally, they stop "supporting" the model every few weeks when a faster processor comes out, and they don't put updated drivers.

However, when I need a Linux/BSD box quickly, they work great. I'd never put a production system on them, but for development and toy testing, they are cheap and easy to come by.

Alex

Re:Powerspec is recovery CDs

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Hmmm....they must have just recently changed this. I didn't say when I bought the machine ;). In any case, they do build decent machines. And, a recovery CD is better then none at all! ;) My bro in law worked for Winbook (I believe that's the laptop division of MEI, who owns Micro Center) a bit ago unitl they out sourced the whole thing. I am not sure what he's doing now, but it's an IT job of that I am certain. The recovery CD deal must have started around then.

Um, on the finding out what stuff part, I think it's usually pretty easy to find that out especially since they use standard stuff. Right click on my computer and pick properties bud! ;) If that fails, then slide the case off (unless they started getting persnickty about that too). Also, I have noticed that they STILL had support stuff on their website (not support mind you, but docs) for my aged system I bought in 1998. The driver front, well, I am smart enough to figure out where to get that stuff and if the driver is decent, then it does not really need that latest tweak. Only way you should be running the latest driver is if you have a problem with the old one....least that's the process I am following now, for the most part. I don't have time to track every freaing driver on my system and if the old one works why screw with it. Same goes for kernels on Linux too.

That company does linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their site doesn't work in konqueror.

It forwards me to "http://www.imagestream.com 0;"

Why, I don't know. I do know that if companies think they know Linux but can't make a website standards compliant, the company sucks.

Re:This is Slashdot. They dont HAVE friends.

[Anonymous Coward]

Au contraire, mon ami. ;-P

You know what's funny about these people who contribute to free (i.e., costless) software?

They'll do it just for the kicks, just for a song... you ask a question and there comes guru Mr. X and really solves your problem.

You may think that it is the search for fame, but I have the impression that they want to be this way.

Call them idiots and they keep being helpful, because this *is their nature* -- really very Zen.

This is, the way I understand, the definition of a good person.

You can call this "a neighbour". Or "friend".

this is good

[Anonymous Coward]

"HP had therefore decided instead to put it all on the hard drive in a protected partition, at least theoretically allowing the recovery program to be accessed even when there was damage to other parts of the hard drive"

Questions...
1) why can not do this for data? You would no longer need to backups, HP has a new solution...

2) So if I buy a system and pay for an operating system, that I may or may not want, I no longer get a copy of it?

3) Have they changed the marketing on the system to reflect that you have an 80GB hard drive with 50GB usable?

Ha Ha

[Drizzit]

Apple provides with the Power Mac G4

1 - OS 9.2.2 install for installing just OS 9.
1 - OS X install for installing just OS X.
the 4 restore CDs to make the computer like new.
1 - applications cd with individual application installers for the third party bundles.
plus two blank CD-Rs

Re:Ha Ha

[EddydaSquige]

WOW they gave you an application CD. I always have to install the damn recover CDs and then copy the apps off of that partition to where I want them. Apple did how ever give me a CD that I havn't seen come with a PC for over 15 years. My G4 came with a hardware diaognostics CD to test all the mother board componants with. That would be something I'd like to see come with all PC's.

Re:Ha Ha

[Drizzit]

Thanks, I forgot to mention the hardware tester CD.

Banner ads? what banner ads?

[Indy1]

oh wait, i forgot i have blacklisted every banner ad server from here to south korea in my hosts file...my bad ;) Lets see, only have 10734 entries in it.......:)

On a serious note, I think not providing a standard windows Xp cd with a machine is criminal. No one should be forced to use "recovery" cd's that just reload an image full of crap on the box. I often provide a standard windows xp cd to my clients if their oem fails to provide them with one. And before you go off on the piracy rant, i dont consider it piracy when someone buys a dell, gateway, hp, etc vomit box and the cheap ass oem wont include a true OS cd for whatever reason. Thats BS, you paid for a legal copy (buried in the system price of course), and you deserve a legit standarized OS cd. And as long as these companies continue to shaft my clients, i will continue to correct their mistake by firing up my liteon 24x, and cooking Window's xp (or 98 depending on what the customer got) on nice shiny 20 cent cd-r blank.

Re:Banner ads? what banner ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure you will be in the news soon when M$ takes you down. You may think it is fine but if M$ finds out a long prison term awaits (or hefty fines at least). You can always fight the system from cell block 9.

Re:Banner ads? what banner ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Upload your hosts file please and post a link :)

Re:Banner ads? what banner ads?

[Indy1]

considering that they own a legal license to the OS, i dont think giving them a backup copy of said OS is illegal. And in any case, even if it is, there are times you are morally justified to break the law, and i think this is one of those times. As a side note, i hardly fear uncle billy's storm troopers er BSA. I am too small to gather attention.

Re:Banner ads? what banner ads?

[Indy1]

email me at my address above and i will send it to you

whine a little louder

[Bossofall]

Obviously anyone who dosn't like the HP policy is against free enterprise. Just wait for application servers to start dishing up you're OS. You don't get software with that either. What will you do then? Switch to linux? yeah right. Lets face facts. If you're so bad with computers that you crash XP before you're next intel upgrade, you should be repairing lawnmower engines. Besides, what would you do once you upgraded, sell you're old computer? Can't have that!! Throw it out!! Waste is what made this country great.

Re:whine a little louder

[Anonymous Coward]

English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?

Re:whine a little louder

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolling Guide Rule #1

When trolling with a high numbered user ID (i.e. > 500,000), trolling requires greater than normal subtlety.

~~~

Re:whine a little louder

[Bossofall]

Why? I don't mean everything I write. Sacrcasim is almost always the best way to get inteligent people to think. It takes a while but eventualy they either get it (maybe not agree) or use it themselves and then get it. I've noticed dumb people just block stuff they don't like out of thier minds. I just think thinking is good. Too much CNN is the devils plaything. I have a relative who used to be a reporter and showed me the ropes. Any (and I mean any) story I have known anything about has always had big flaws in it. After you calm down you will realize I wasn't slamming anyone except HP, big companies and XP. I was just pointing out that a mindset is slowly being developed, in the market place, bent on turning capatalism into a religeon, much like materialism. Someday soon all this will be a moral issue and good people won't complain about it.

Want a real Windows CD?

[Mr. Piccolo]

Buy from Polywell Systems. They provide the actual Windows disks, with their pretty holograms and paper-thin manual and all that.

They also provide a floppy disk that you can use to recover your system to its as-shipped configuration. What they do is put a hidden file containing the original C drive image in the D drive. In my case it only takes 1.5 GB out of my drive, which is much better than taking 10+GB. They also give you instructions for creating additional C drive images using the ghost utility.

Unfortunately, online ordering from them isn't the best, but still, for what you get, it's probably worth the annoyance.

BTW: If you want Linux, or even Solaris (!), they do that too.

Re:Want a real Windows CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

> They also provide a floppy disk that you can use to recover your system to its as-shipped configuration. What they do is put a hidden file containing the original C drive image in the D drive. In my case it only takes 1.5 GB out of my drive, which is much better than taking 10+GB. They also give you instructions for creating additional C drive images using the ghost utility.

Thank god for that last sentence; that saved them in my view. I would HATE to have to restore my PC back to its original, no-useful-data condition after a year or so's worth of use.

Re:Want a real Windows CD?

[Mr. Piccolo]

While true, you sort of missed the point. YOU HAVE THE WINDOWS CD, so you really don't need the recovery disk at all if you don't want to use it.

a broader issue

[bcrowell]

One of the justifications HP gave for their policy is that the stack of disks would be too big. This just points up a broader issue, which is the unreasonable amount of time it takes to maintain a PC. Most PC users (not most Slashdotters :-) do not want to spend many hours a week maintaining their PC.

One of the reasons it's getting to be such a hassle to maintain a PC is that the capacity of hard disks has greatly outstripped the capacity of affordable backup media. I'm finally getting a DVD burner, but even so, the cost of the media is going to keep me from making backups of my whole system more than once in a blue moon.

Since I'm using a fairly new and buggy os (Mac OS X), I've ended up having to clean install my system several times. Even though I had install disks, it was an all-day project each time, and that was a day during which I couldn't get any work done on my computer. But now manufacturers are going to expect us to stop working for a week while we wait for install disks???? Argh...

Maybe the future lies with automatic overnight internet backup services. Every night your machine would dial up the modem, and do an incremental backup onto a server. This month's Scientific American has an interesting article about this kind of internet-wide distributed computing/storage application. They suggest that backup services could be offered in return for the use of your CPU cycles overnight, for projects like SETI@home.

Re:a broader issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I'm using a fairly new and buggy os (Mac OS X), I've ended up having to clean install my system several times.

What the heck are you doing to your box, dude? :) I haven't had to clean install MOSX past the original installation.

yes, necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

your system becomes so horribly corrupted

Happened to my pointy headed social worker boss. And I charged him $200 to restart his Pavilion.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The XP activation key is now cracked.

Certain Compaqs are not much better

[Cerlyn]

My brother had a Compaq laptop which started to have hard drive problems. After a complete reformat, we found that the "Recovery CD" would not recover, and was spitting out random error messages.

A support call into Compaq told us that the recovery CD supplied with the laptop did not have all the information. It relied on a secondary partition (which is visable, virus infectable, etc.) in order to complete a restore.

Fortunately, they were willing to send out a two-CD repair set. A week later and several hours worth of things installing/backing up in seemingly the most awkward way possible, my brother's system was working again.

And while doing some support tech work, I did indeed setup some IBM computers that came with no visable restore functionality at all.

(Aren't cost cutting measures grand?)

Re:windoze

[Anonymous Coward]

>XP has yet to crash

Mine has over and over

>and it supports all my apps

It doesn't support any legacy apps. Or did you just get your computer for Christmas, little man, and therefore don't have any old stuff?

>linux is a marginal server, BSD is much better.

Yes, I hear BSD is much better as being marginal -- On hardware support, that is.

>And windows is a good workstation.

So's a VT220 terminal, but you don't see anyone crying when they pry them out of their hands.

>charging $192 for a "free" product
>especially one with the most exploits

I know -- crazy isn't it?

Like, you know, when you offer more than a couple of native running apps, well, I guess you incurr more risk.

In short, you can jump up my butt.

your best bet for recovery

[markj02]

Your best bet for recovery is to image the drive yourself, over Ethernet, to some other disk. If you gzip it, it usually won't be that bad. That has worked better for me than even the recovery CDs, which usually are laborious and nosy.

How do you do this? Well, here is what has worked for me in th epast. Boot from a Linux recovery CD, NFS mount a remote directory, and use something like: "gzip /nfs/hp-backup-hda.gz".

Or, you can do it partition by partition with something like "dd if=/dev/hda of=/nfs/hp-partition-info bs=1024 count=100", then "gzip /nfs/hp-backup-hda1.gz", etc. To restore, first restore the partition info, then the individual partitions.

I haven't found a bootable CD with USB support yet, but once that comes out, you can also image to a USB disk. There are lots of really cheap and small USB disks out there now that you can use for this kind of backup.

(Use this at your own risk and understand what you are doing. If it doesn't work for you, well, too bad.)

Banner Ad?

[cdgod]

What banner ad? sorry guys, I haven't been able to view ads for a long time now.

I suggest you use: Adshield

Go to: www.adshield.org

It's free, and very easy to use!

Re:Banner Ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only requirement for using AdShield is version 5 or higher of Microsoft® Internet Explorer running on the Microsoft Windows® operating system. Note that AdShield will not interfere with the use of other browsers you may have installed, but it won't block ads in them either. "

Microsoft Windows XP Home at amazon.com: $99

Doesn't seem to be any source either. In what way is this "free"?

I think you're on the wrong site. Fuck off.

correction

[markj02]

Oops, HTML ate my redirections. They are important... (when will /. get quoting for source code?).

Whole disk:

• gzip < /dev/hda > /nfs/hp-backup-hda.gz

Partition by partition:

• partition info: dd if=/dev/hda of=/nfs/hp-partition-info bs=1024 count=100
• first partition: gzip < /dev/hda1 > /nfs/hp-backup-hda1.gz
• second partition: (you figure it out)

If you can't figure out how to restore it, you probably shouldn't be using this method, and you use it at your own risk anyway. There are also commercial disk imagers that work over the network that you can use.

Re:correction

[spt]

"when will /. get quoting for source code?)"

When you select "Code" from the dropdown box underneath the comment box!

gzip < /dev/hda > /nfs/hp-backup-hda.gz

WOW, manufacturers don't make it easy for users?

[neuroticia]

uh oh. Hope I never have to use a floppy. =] I ripped out my floppy for a place to mount a second hard drive in my Compaq, and snipped the floppy power supply cable connector to splice on a hard drive power connector.

NEWSFLASH: computer manufacturers do not make it easy to do anything you want to do. Computer manufacturers are for consumers, not for actual system users. Most consumers would rather buy a new PC than deal with something like disk failure. Support lines for consumer products aren't going to be able to give you an answer, you probably know more than they do.

Haven't you noticed that every time you're on the phone with support staff the on-going statement of the day seems to be "oh.. uhm.. I've never heard of it doing that before. Uhm.. Are you sure the computer is plugged in?"

-Sara

WTF is wrong with www.imagestream.com?

[Skapare]

WTF is wrong with www.imagestream.com? On Netscape 4.7, the page just blinks back and forth between all white and all gray. I switched off the proxy thinking that was the cause, and started a new browser process to be sure, and it's still doing the same thing. I looked at the HTML and I found:

<meta http-equiv="Expires" name="Expires" content="Wed Mar 18 23:59:00 EST 1998">

That's really smart. Expire the page before it even finishes loading. Maybe you should be glad you work for HP's contractor ... unless you were their web programmer, in which case I see probable cause for letting you go.

Re:WTF is wrong with www.imagestream.com?

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

"Expires" refers to cache expiry, not page expiry.

The only effect this might have is to prevent the page from being cached. It's probably done intentionally, and it definately isn't causing your problem.

-If

Re:WTF is wrong with www.imagestream.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very standard to set an expire header in the past to make sure the page doesn't get cached. You can't set it to 5 minutes ago, or 1 hour ago, or 5 minutes from now because of time zone differences. The problem you saw was not due to Netscape or page headers. I've never seen this problem occur with any version of any browser at any time (going back to 1998 here). It was likely a rendering issue or something like that.

Re:WTF is wrong with www.imagestream.com?

[Skapare]

It was already refetching the content from the web site every cycle. I suspect a meta-refresh they had which had a syntax error (that probably obscured the intended page to move to) combined with the expires. Since the page was not in the cache, it got fetched again when it tried to refresh which fell back to using the same page. Here is what I see in the meta refresh:

<META HTTP-EQUIV=REFRESH CONTENT=?0; URL=text_index.html">

... where the ? is actually byte code decimal 148, hexadecimal 94, octal 224. Note also the double quote all by itself after the path. Apparently they meant for a double quote where the funny character is, but some garbage got in there, so the value assigned to the content for refresh was just the funny character and 0. The path was lost altogther. So it refreshes the current page after 0 seconds, with no supporting cache.

Why web designers even do this jerking around to change URL is strange to me. Besides, in this case the apparent URL isn't even there (404). This is a borked web site.

I buy WhiteBox

[xtremex]

I only buy whitebox. I havent bought a name brand PC in AGES.(Since 1995 actually). I get EXACTLY what I want, the exact components I want. I used to just build them, but now I have www.mwave.com do it. Then I install a fresh copy of linux on the machine and presto, I have a kick-ass machine. Why do people buy name-brand anyway? It's an honest question. I can understand a company buying a fleet of Dells, but why does an individual buy a Gateway or what not? What's the supposed added benefit?

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why do people buy name-brand anyway? It's an honest question. I can understand a company buying a fleet of Dells, but why does an individual buy a Gateway or what not? What's the supposed added benefit?

Timesaver, mostly. Get the whole running PC all at once. Then, repartition and install the real desktop OS.

But, I'm not doing that again. My Dell is fine so far, but now I wished I'd gone ahead and built it up.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[k_187]

Why do people buy coke and pepsi? Wal-Mart Brand Pop ttastes pretty much the same and it costs half as much. People like seeing Brand-Names(tm), I guess.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[Matchu]

The average clueless user buys name brand for the security aspect - they feel safe because they can get support from the manufacturer.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[Detritus]

Integration, thermal engineering, testing, certification, hardware/software support, warranty, diagnostics, service contract, spare parts support.

Your mileage may vary. I bought a low-end Netfinity server from IBM, which is well supported by IBM. It had all of the features I wanted (SMP, SCSI, ECC), which were not available on any "consumer grade" box. I've built plenty of computers. Sometimes it's nice just to be able to pull it out of the box, plug it in, and start using it.

I wouldn't buy a Presario, Pavillion or similar low-end computer. I've heard too many horror stories about them.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[chialea]

Buying from IBM is a good idea in general, I've found, especially with laptops. Except for my last one (an X series that has had a series of display problems) I've had very few problems, especially considering how I treat them (thrown in a backpack, used up to 20 hours a day). Now I've had my first serious problem (backlight burnt out), called tech support at 10pm, and they had a box to me to ship it back in by 10:30am!

My friends who have had any other brand of laptop (bar Apple's G3s and Titaniums -- which haven't been around long enough to have a lot of wear) have had the runaround happen every which way, and had them fixed in an unsatisfactory manner. It's even worse with desktops: hard drives that fail on a regular basis, video cards that go poof, and crappy sound hardware.

Ahwell. People say I'm insane to only use laptops, but they hang around longer than the Gateways and HPs I've seen!

Lea

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[billethius]

I bought my Presario because when I bought it (just starting college) it had basically everything I wanted in it and it was really cheap because of a sale going on at the time. My next computer will be one that I build or have built by a local shop. BTW, I really haven't had that many problems with my Presario....other than winXP crashing on me, but a linux partition has solved that for the most part...

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[IronChef]

Why do people buy name-brand anyway?

Not everyone is a computer hobbyist. The people buying Dells etc. don't know jack 'bout northbridge, southbridge, RAM latency, detonator drivers, heat sinks, etc. To part out a PC, you need a clue! Clues are in short supply.

If they don't KNOW anything -- if they don't even KNOW that they are ignorant -- buying name brand is the obvious outcome. When you are clueless, you go where the glossy brochures and TV commercials lead you.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[IronChef]

I gotta come to the defense of Coke here. I have tried many a cola, and nothing tastes quite the same.

It's more expensive, but it's worth it to me. I'm picky. It's not about branding, it's about taste. I can't even drink Pepsi, it's vile. Taste matters.

If anyone with a golden tongue can recommend a cheap brand that tastes as good as real Coke, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[NDPTAL85]

The PowerBook G3 came out in 1998. Thats not long enough to show some wear? I should show you mine then.... (^_^)

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[Pi3.142]

No Sir - I may very well throw in 120$ bucks one time for the service warranty then to waste 4 hours ( 480$ )of my contracting time to do the same.

Re:I buy WhiteBox

[fyonn]

so what you're saying is that "image is nothing, taste is evetrything" eh ? :)

actually, i have to agree, I'll take that pepsi challenge anytime. pepsi is okay if somewhere doesn't have coke, but coke is noticeably better (and prolly worse for my teeth)

dave

Sounds Typical

[Ralman]

Years ago at a previous company, I was a senior developer on a team that wrote software for the OEMs and VARs to cut down on their support calls. We worked with Packard-Bell, Dell, and a few others to see what the most common problems and resolutions were.

I can't remember what the exact numbers were, but at least 30% were stupid user errors. About 20% was hardware issues, i.e. sub-par crap that was always failing. The rest was miscellaneous issues.

So this leaves us with about 50% remaining. It was about 2/3 of those cases resulted in the "format and restore" process. This was by far the most common resolution to be given out. The rest was to uninstall and re-install the problem software. The most common... AOL. Go figure.

Of course the reason the "format and restore" problem was the most dominant was that the end-user had a "computer guy" come take a look at it first. This "computer guy" usually a friend of theirs who knew just enought to be dangerous, but not enough to know what he was doing. Basically the machine was too screwed up for the tech to diagnose the issue because someone decided to muck with the damn thing before calling for support, or reading the manuals that came with the computer in the first place.

On a different note about recovery CDs...

[taliver]

I just got a Compaq laptop, and while screwing around with it, ended up nuking the original XP that it came with. (I had repartitioned the drives incorrectly, and then had installed GRUB.)

Anyway, when I used the recover CDs, it removed the partions that I had made, but didn't touch the MBR!!

I would have thought that this would be a major oversite of a recovery disk-- isn't that the most famous place for a virus to sleep?

(Alls well now, I'm dual booting with no difficulty...)

price per megabyte, my friend

[Herr_Nightingale]

. I wonder if the recovery cds could be used to pirate windows XP, if so I suspect that is the real reason for their reluctance.

That's hardly the reason why the CD's aren't shipped: rather, the extra $0.09 per CD eats into Micro$oft profits. Imagine those pennies (at ~54 cents per HP computer) staying inside Micro$oft instead of providing perceived value to the customer, and note that many people won't complain no matter what happens. Then count the number of idiots who will go out and buy WinXP because they don't have any reasonable alternative (merits of free OS aside for the moment) - that's something like $200 a shot directly to MS.
Consider also the fact that the target market for these crippled, low end machines is the technologically impaired, and soon the question is "Why did they EVER provide rescue CD's?"
The answer to that question is, of course, the cost per megabyte of hard disk storage vs. cost per megabyte of CD.

In summary, the miniscule price of hard drive storage today has allowed Microsoft to pee on the customer while laying the blame squarely on HP. Rather neat, ain't it?

Re:price per megabyte, my friend

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's hardly the reason why the CD's aren't shipped: rather, the extra $0.09 per CD eats into Micro$oft profits.

Right idea, wrong target. This is the OEMs that won't ship the proper OS etc media, not Microsoft. MS isn't forcing recovery disks, that's an OEM cost-reduction innovation.

Re:price per megabyte, my friend

[Convergence]

Actually, I believe it *is* microsoft leading the charge and coercing the OEM's to ship recovery disks instead of installation media.

Something about the ability to install the OS you paid for on a new machine after junking your current one without paying them?

Re:price per megabyte, my friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I believe it *is* microsoft leading the charge and coercing the OEM's to ship recovery disks instead of installation media.

Something about the ability to install the OS you paid for on a new machine after junking your current one without paying them?
---
Sure it is a valid component but even as the article mentions, it's not the main factor, neither is the saving of a few cd's.

The bigger issues are convience and reducing support calls. Of course corps are looking mostly at the reduction of calls.

Something is wrong.

[Paul E. Loeb]

"XP was so big that half a dozen or more CDs would be required"

Funny I don't get this. I have many copies of XP, for several clients and they only contain one cd. This is for the complete install! How can recovery take 12 cds?

Re:Something is wrong.

[shessel]

XP may come on one CD, but there are a whole slew of third-party add-ons that HP will drop down to your PC if you do a factory-fresh reinstall. Software like AOL, MSN, maybe McAfee AV (or some other AV solution), a scaled-down version of a burner program, etc., would come on a second CD.

I can only see two CD's though, not twelve. And I certainly don't see them packaging an XP Service Pack CD with the bundle!

Re:Something is wrong.

[McNally]

Funny I don't get this. I have many copies of XP, for several clients and they only contain one cd. This is for the complete install! How can recovery take 12 cds?

Maybe they were including the bug fixes and security updates.. :-p

Re:Something is wrong.

[echosilex]

If you read the quote carefully, you would find that it says "half a dozen". Now, since most of us know 1 dozen = 12, one half dozen is 12/2, or 6. And then off the topic of math, I don't find the part with you saying you have several clients any more helpful to your case that XP only has one cd.

Re:Something is wrong.

[Paul E. Loeb]

echosilex likes boys.

Re:Something is wrong.

[echosilex]

I've got $20 with a friend that says you were out trying to pick up 10 year old boys last night. Don't try to pin that stuff on me.

HP Pavilion

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an HP Pavilion N5445 laptop that I am extremely pleased with even though it does have Windows XP on it, and it came with 3 restore cd's that I have had to use due to a bad driver upgrade.

17 CDs???

[CaptainSuperBoy]

The software would take up 17 CDs? Is there something I'm missing here? Windows XP takes up 1 CD. Then you have sound, video, DVD and other drivers, CDR/DVD software, video/photo editing, etc. That shouldn't take up more than 2 CDs.. so what are the other 14 CDs for? I don't know what 'HP Learning Adventure' is, but I am confident that it's evil in some way. You can leave that out..

Re:17 CDs???

[felipeal]

so what are the other 14 CDs for? I don't know what 'HP Learning Adventure' is

It's a tool to teach you how to waste disk space...

Re:17 CDs???

[DickBreath]

It's a tool to teach you how to waste disk space...

It's a valuable software package which increases stockholder value of hard drive manufacturers.

OK--for those of you that are surprised . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . two words: Compaquard Bell.

~~~

Re:OK--for those of you that are surprised . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer the more elegant Compaquard Bell Big Useless Ball Of Fuckwad Shit

IBM technical support told me....

[yankeehack]

I bought an IBM (EPP discount) spring 2001 to (ironically enough I guess) use as my linux box at home. While I wasn't really interested in Windows ME at time, I figured that at the very least I had an extra Win license to hold on to in case I ever needed it for a upgrade or whatnot (I still have to use Microsoft products professionally).

Anyway, the box came with no separate backup material. There's a hidden partition on the HD with ME on it, but no CD-ROM. (And the several Linux installs I've done on the drive since then haven't touched the partition--so all I'm losing is space.)

I even called IBM technical support about this issue, and after I told the guy what was going on, he strongly hinted--I guess he was afraid to tell me outgright--that if I wanted a backup CD, I would have to "prove" that the HD was malfunctioning, which I wasn't in the mood to do at the time.

But hey, at least IBM was thoughtful enough to include a backup CD of Lotus Notes! woo hoo!

Re:windoze

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You and whoever wrote this have serious problems. There are so many things fundamentally wrong with this post. If I wasn't the Zen master of the universe, this post would have really pissed me off. You are an idiot and no good in bed. I hope your sperm are sterile.

save yourself some money...

[Herr_Nightingale]

buy a white box, install whatever OS you want, and avoid the M$ OEM-tax. You can get a whole lot more bang for the buck than HP/Dell/Gateway will give you.
I've never bought a brand-name (aside from laptop) and never worried about shitty OEM restore CD's that dump all over my clean hard drive. I recommend www.pecanada.com if you live in British Columbia.

Re:save yourself some money...

[AKA da JET]

I've actually considered this option. Although I don't know how much money it would save me if I bought a blank one or built one from scratch.

Re:save yourself some money...

[steveg]

It may not save you any money. It never does for me.

But I always get a far better machine than I would from any vendor. Comes from being picky about components. Probably why it never saves me any money too.

XP???

[TheShadow]

Just wipe the drive and steal Windows 2000 from your employer.

Re:XP???

[base3]

Best of luck finding Win2K drivers for all the Wal-Mart grade hardware in that HP box.

Re:XP???

[TheShadow]

oh yeah... i forgot... don't buy HP either. ;)

The problem is not new ...

[Aging_Newbie]

I am taking my Win98 CD to a friend's house to restore her OS after a worm attacked it. She never got media with her pc and when I looked on her drive there was nothing to restore from ... It's particularly unforgivable when the OS is so susceptible to worms and other attacks.

All of this news comes just in time to make me even happier that I now use Mandrake as my primary machine and an old windoze box for a couple of special apps that I use once in a while.

By the way, since it doesn't seem all that safe to put a windoze box on the Internet anyway, what's all the fuss about M$ installing updates whenever they want? If you just keep it where it belongs, driving cheap printers, scanners, and displaying CD maps, then you don't need to worry about M$ doing anything to it.

Re:The problem is not new ...

[screwtheNSA]

Good morning Mrs. Gates; I am here to restore your version of WIN98SE on your system. Please be advised that the bill reflects my service only, and not the price of the software(which I am supplying freely), the big difference you must know about is that you can not call for tech support or updates from the MS website because the copy you now have is obviously registered to some other schmuck i don't know. Easy "method" of bypassing the "distribution" restrictions and receiveing payment for "pirated" copies...you never sold anything, but gave the copy freely to another. As far as "home" printers go; I have had great luck with Lexmark(IBM) printers. They might be slower(my Z-11 is), but they go forever! I recall my Panasonic KXP-1080 dot-matrix printer, what a durable machine that was! I dropped it on the floor several times while moving papers, and moving the desk so many times I wore out the pads on the feet. That was a solidly built printer for what we call now a junk pile!

*Running CP/M on a Vector S-100 bus machine since 1980*

My two Compaq LTE5300's and a Toshiba 4800CT run fine with no problems, but a Kingston memory card DID cause a system lockup on cold boot(32Mb) on both LTEs.

College students buy what's available on campus

[yerricde]

Why do people buy coke and pepsi?

Partly because the vending machine downstairs from the dorm room of a student who doesn't drive carries Pepsi® brand soft drinks but not Sam's choice® brand.

This is NOT new.

[kwishot]

I work for an OEM in Wisconsin. This is NOT a new thing, nor is it an "HP" thing. Microsoft has made it so that the sticker with the license number is the important part. OEM's get the software a lot cheaper if they buy X stickers rather than X Sticker+CD OEM bundles. Lower Windows prices = Lower system prices. This has been happening since the later days of 98SE, continuing into ME, and most recently XP.
Always remember, when you buy software, you're not buying the software, you're buying the license (!sticker!) to use the software as defined by the EULA. You're not really entitled to the media unless you pay extra for it. Yes, I know, it sucks. Yes, I know, free solutions (linux, etc) are better. But yes, I know, that that's how it's done and there isn't much anyone can do about it because Microsoft provides that price incentive to OEMs and it's extremely hard for them to resist.
-kwishot

How about the EULA

[jgerman]

I buy an HP, HP techs (and I use the term loosely) agreed to the click thorough license, (legally binding in MD). I never agreed to it, I never saw it. So I now have a copy of Windows which I can do whatever I want with. Somehow I doubt I could get away with cpying it and re-distibuting it, but now legally even with UCITA, I can reverse engineer it or whatever.

Re:How about the EULA

[gmhowell]

First thing: did you request a different software package when you bought it? Probably not.

Anyway, did you assign agency to the HP tech? Almost definately not. They SOLD you a device. They did not license it. If the HP tech agreed to the license, that is their problem, not yours.

As far as MD goes, fuck 'em in the ass. Quite honestly, I'm so freakin' bored, I wouldn't mind testing out the legality of the UCITA. Goddamn assholes. We're getting ripped like this with that prick Glendenning in Annapolis, I can't even imagine how bad things would be with the Republicans there.

Anyway, I doubt that the license is binding on you. Just the tech.

Re:How about the EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though the os is preinstalled, there is still a eula screen for the end-user to click through.

Re:How about the EULA

[gmhowell]

which makes the comment about being forced into accepting it by an HP tech a bit moot. Thanks for verifying that. I wasn't sure, so didn't mention it.

Re:How about the EULA

[duffbeer703]

In that case, the HP Techs were acting as your authorized agent. If you claimed that the tech was not your agent, your license would be void, as they are non-transferrable.

Not everything over $20 at Best Buy sucks

[yerricde]

rule #1 NEVER buy ANYTHING valued over $20 at best buy. best buy comes from bizzaro world

NEVER may be too strong of a word. My friend bought a Game Boy Advance system at Best Buy (was $90, now $80), and it works fine, even with third-party development add-ons from Visoly. It should be safe to buy factory-sealed Nintendo products anywhere.

I'm sick of HP's crap.

[Mikesch]

This just ups my already pathological hatred of HP.

I borrowed my parent's digital camera last week to take a few pictures, I didn't have the driver CD and I'm using windows xp, so required drivers aren't on that cd anyway. I go to HP's site and it proceeds to give me instructions on ordering a CD from them for replacement drivers. As near as I can figure, digital camera drivers are analogous to scanner drivers and should be about 2 megs at most, TWAIN crap and all. As long as I have photoshop I have no need for whatever crap they shovel onto the CD. I would have been a happy camper if I could have just taken the 30 seconds to download the drivers. Instead I am supposed to jump through hoops and shell out for a CD for software for a piece of hardware I already own.

Earlier in the week, I was at work, dealing with one of their combination printer/fax/copier machines, the laserjet 3100. I couldn't find the driver cd initially, and didn't care to try to install standard postscript drivers since they usually don't work on lower end printers anyway. I try to download the drivers off of their website, once again, I'm instructed to order a CD. For something as simple as printer drivers. 30 seconds of my time turned into 30 minutes as I had to hunt down the driver CD in the woman's office and get the drivers installed.

As a result I sent a nastygram to HP asking why drivers for some of their more obscure products (anything not supported by built in windows drivers anyway) aren't available on their site. The response I got basically amounted to "you need to order a CD because we don't have the drivers up, so you need to order a CD and you can find the instructions for ordering a CD on our site."

Last week we also had a 2 month old laserjet 4100N fail with a "fuser error", a 1200 die with a "printer tray mispick" error, the 8100s seem to have a massive issue where the third tray jams constantly. and our 8500C(or 8550, forget which) was slower than all hell. HPs tech support gave us a song and dance about how the engine speed only related to multiple copies of the same page... blah blah blah. They finally got a marketroid in there to say that it wasn't right, he called tech support and we spent half a day working on this crap, only to use older drivers that let it work at a reasonable speed.

Last week I had to set up another printer in another department, using one of their external JetDirect print servers. Apparently the things do not like it if you dont have a DHCP server. When setting them up manually, for some stupid reason they will only take one change to their network settings at a time. Change ip address, ok, go back in, change subnet mask, ok, go back in, change gateway, ok...

Don't even get me started about the inkjets.

So, yeah, long story short I'm sick of HP and will do anything to avoid buying/touching them in the future. Their tech support is lousy and flat out lies, they won't give proper driver support for their lousy products, and their products are shoddy to begin with.

They are truly an evil company who is going to take Compaq down with them, not that compaq was that spectacular to begin with.

Re:I'm sick of HP's crap.

[base3]

HP used to make great stuff. Then they squandered their good name on consumer grade crap. The Compaq buyout is just the chickens coming home to roost.

Re:I'm sick of HP's crap.

[uncadonna]

It's the Folger's syndrome.

HP used to be the *best* electronic products around. I guess they spun their talent off into something called Agilent and are now producing marginally functional mass market garbage, living off their declining good name (and presumably not forever).

I understand that Folger's used to be a renowned coffee shop. (in SF I think?) Procter & Gamble decided to get market share of low end coffee so they bought the coffee shop for the name. Then they canned dreadful low end robusta beans that taste like last week's newspaper under that name. They apparently got a leg up in the lousy coffee market because people had some vague memory of some coffee lover saying nice things about something called "Folger's".

I fell for it. I have an HP printer whose feed mechanism died after three months of light use, and I'm typing this on a Pavilion which I had to ship back to Oregon to replace the installed hard drive, because no one could replace it under warrantee within 1500 miles of here.

Meanwhile my HP RPN calculator from 1983 is still working fine. Wierd, huh? It's just a name now, what we are seeing is not the real HP.

If Carly succeeds in getting Compaq after they succeeded in getting DEC, three former quality brands will go down in one ugly mess of goodwill mining. Are there any reliable brands left, or have they all been sucked of their value by the ineffable brilliance of day traders and quarterly profit reports?

Re:I'm sick of HP's crap.

[acceleriter]

Let's have a moment of silence for d|i|g|i|t|a|l.

- pause -

I'm still happily using my 48G, and would be using my 42S from before that if I hadn't gone and lost it. Wouldn't have made it through the first two semesters of Calculus without the 42S.

It is unfortunate that we can't rely on brand names anymore--as soon as a product gets a decent reputation, the "brand builders" latch onto it, sell utter shite with the name, burn it up, and move on to the next. I agree with your assessment that Compaq will be history repeating itself, except that Compaq's quality (outside the server space) pretty much sucks these days, too.

Goodwill mining was an excellent choice of words. More like strip mining, in HP's case.

Re:I'm sick of HP's crap.

[dagoalieman]

I'm suprised to hear this from you all. Our campus is fairly exclusively HP printers- well over a hundred of the puppies. Some of them are in labs where people print out their assignments during the day and some guy prints out the works of shakespeare at night- they get pretty heavily used.

Through all of this though, we've not had but one or two lemons that I've seen in the past several years. HP's been pretty nice about replacing those. The print quality on some gets a bit crappy when the toner runs low, but that's easy to fix. Occasional paper jam, but in general the hardware's been pretty reliable. The Unix machines love printing to the lpr server with jetdirects on the other end, and windows machines tolerate it pretty well- a few rare exceptions based on printer driver conflicts.. MS's fault there typically.

Some of the home printers are crap, but the business machines seem to be great. I think they know where the money is there (A business which buys the big expensive printers, plus jetdirects after that, will amount to more than 100 customers getting home cheapo printers..)

Folgers, however.. I always wondered what they did with all the cow patties from that field next door..

.

Re:I'm sick of HP's crap.

[juliao]

Are there any reliable brands left, or have they all been sucked of their value by the ineffable brilliance of day traders and quarterly profit reports?

Apple.

Corporativism

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, HP customers now have to take the same s..t the Russians once had to do. Difference is, it's gift wrapped and they pay for it.

/jarek

This has been a thorn for years...

[Brat Food]

This is a horrible practice that big PC mfgs have been doing for YEARS. Compaq and HP seem to be some of the biggest offenders in my years as a PC tech.

Heres the situation. They give you one or more of the following.

- recovery partition and NO CDS (not even windows)
- CDs for OEM software and a Recovery CD. Now, the recovery CD would be all well and good, but, they usually have NO repair/reinstall on a different partition option. So you HAVE to format your HD to use this CD (who the HELL thought of this, i want to maim them).

Basically, either way your screwed. If you lose a windows system file to corruption (this seems to happen WAY too often), most of these poor customers end up reformatting their HD. And with a 'recovery partition', your still ****** most of the time .

The point is, do the increase of tech support calls and returns make up for the short sited cost savings on not putting in CDs of the system and all the OEM software you were supposedly getting (you dont really 'have' it unless you have a way to install it IMHO). No.

And for the record, when you buy an apple machine, you get restore Cd's, and you can count on their usefullness. It only takes a few CDs, but EVERYONE who has a mac has them. It helps in tech support SO much to know that everyone has at LEAST the base on CD. You get the OS, basic utilities, and Apple software. It should be a standard in the PC world, not an exception.

Re:This has been a thorn for years...

[Deep_Blue]

Actually you are mostly wrong.For 2 years now both HP and Compaq have give the option to eiter recover witout formatting (HP ) or backup your data and reinstall from that backup using Quick Restore(Compaq).If you would have bothered to actually read those options on the newer computers you wouldn't post outright lies about these restores.
As for Apple you just don't know.The latest Apple recovery CD's...you know the ones that are coming with the iMac's on 4 CD's will happily format your HDD without any other option.So again: you may want to check your facts a bit before ranting about things you don't know.

Re:HA.. Looks like HP is adopting Compaq's evil wa

[kwishot]

Can you tell me which Circuit City you shop at? If they had 1.3ghz processors and DDR ram two years ago, I'd REALLY like to see what they have now!

Tell me about it.

[Mikesch]

I've seen some of their old servers and they were great pieces of engineering. Looking at the tinfoil that they put their PCs together out of, it is hard to imagine that it is the same company.

There are a hell of a lot of old laserjets pounding out page after page after 10 years, why can't the new ones last more than 3 months.

I always hated Compaq's home stuff, but at least their business stuff was tolerable. That's been going downhill too.

Small question for the PC builders. If the margins are so low on consumer PCs that 3 dollars worth of cds cuts drastically into your margins, why are you even bothering to sell them? Find a worthwhile market to sell a product to. If you can't make money selling PCs, just don't sell them, Toshiba and IBM have already cleared out of the desktop PC market, it is time for the other makers to do so too, rather than screwing over customers.

Re:Tell me about it.

[mdwebster]

IBM at least hasn't completely cleared out of the desktop market. Their workstations and business-class machines and a few consumer-grade boxes are still being sold direct order so that they can still be a "total solution provider". You need 3000 desktops to go with that server farm you just bought and a guarantee that they'll interoperate? No problem ... right? :)

Original disks are only part of the problem

[dballanc]

I own a relatively small computer shop, and have to deal with repairing all the Compaq/HP machines sold by the nearby retail chains. By far the biggest problem I have is not coming up with the original media (I have a large collection of original disks), but with obtaining drivers for proprietary hardware. Some companies (Can you scream COMPAQ loudly here please) NEVER have all the drivers for a particular system easily downloadable. If the drivers haven't changed from the versions on the restore disk - good luck finding them. Granted I can eventually find most drivers somewhere given enough quality time with google, but why should we have to. It makes no sense for the company not to keep updated drivers available for customers - unless you consider that doing so is yet another way to force consumers to use restore disks/partitions. Companies like HP and Compaq do not want you to have an upgradable system, they want you to be forced to buy a new computer every few years to stay current. Can you find W2k drivers for that 2 year old compaq notebook? Hard drive upgrade options - anyone remember when Compaq was putting the BIOS configuration utility on the hard drives - the system wouldn't even boot without the original drive.

ON a related note Microsoft also encourages the practice of restore media, over the original disks. As a member of the OEM system builder program I have received requests to not include the original CD when selling an OEM Windows version on new systems.

Any companies selling computer at either Wal-Mart or Radio Shack have since stopped selling computers. The Wal-mart/Radio Shack kiss of death. Good riddance I say. Fare well proprietary Compaq, farewell sub-standard HP!

Re:Original disks are only part of the problem

[Maserati]

Compaq actually does have their drivers "available", for small values of "available". To find them you need to search the support forums, not the support website. The search on the whole website is less than useless, and answers from emailing customer support will also be wrong (they don't have accurate indices of the recovery disks for one thing). But, I've been able to find everything I've needed through the forum.

Re:your best bet for recovery? Doubtful

[g0at]

Right, like anyone who is going to use a Linux recovery CD to back up the pre-loaded Microsoft OS and Windows apps will have bought an HP brand computer in the first place.

(alternatively: Right, like any Joe Home User who bought an HP targeted at the Joe Home User is going to understand a thing you just said.)

HP: the corporate software pirates

[LuxFX]

Forget for the moment that HP probably just buys extra licenses for each machine, and probably doesn't have actually have that many copies of the XP discs. But for all intents and purposes, they actually do.

So now look at it like this. HP buys a copy of XP. They install it, and a recovery version onto a machine. Then they sell the machine, and keep the XP installation discs.

In what country is this not the equivalent of software piracy?

Har har, very unfunny...

[2nd Post!]

I did take VLSI and VHDL courses in college, so I wouldn't be lining up transistors so much as connecting wires between functional units and designing functional units :P

Re:HA.. Looks like HP is adopting Compaq's evil wa

[jarodss]

//puts on compaq worker hat//

The Recovery CD reads the extended partition on the hard drive.
The Quick Restore CD set, which contains all the preinstalled software, is $10 plus shipping (there is a free option).
If the hard drive had any bad blocks then you should have called tech support, they would have replaced the drive for you.
Yes the BIOS is lame but what do you expect? If you overclock the system and fried the mobo you wouldn't expect compaq or anyone else to replace the board under warranty would you? And of course you would tell tech support that you overclocked right?

Here's why....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an HP tech-support guy, and yes, I can confirm this policy. We can give CDs out, though, to people who have simply repartitioned their disks, or who have a new hard drive, or even have just run fdisk (which immediately kills the hidden partition...whoops...). I've seen CDs given disks out to people who just didn't feel comfortable with this 'hidden partition' business. There is that $10.00 charge, though... What's amazing is how rarely this is an issue; only once have I had a person who wiped their partition running fdisk. Not the most enlightened customer base. As to the reason, it's not because lost CDs were an issue, or because it's easier for HP support (though it is...), or anything like that: it's to get around the Windows XP EULA. HP customers don't have to authorize their units, and they can do as many reinstallations of the OS as they want. And some of them NEED that option... So really--and I don't want to sound like I'm defending HP here, but it's true--it's not HP's fault at all; it's (get ready for it...) Microsoft! Damn Microsoft! And given that, it's a little suprising that Microsoft allows HP to give out the CDs at all...

only affects newbies or the un-educated

[Lumpy]

Sorry but anyone that even remotely thinks they are a computer user would NEVER buy an HP or anything pre-manufacturered. The first thing you learn is that DELL,HP,compaq,Gateway,whatever all use the crappiest components possible. They only way to get perfoemance and quality is to get it at your local computer shop, Just like a car. yeah you can buy a grand-am from the dealer, but the local performance shop can make you a car that will make even the latest corvette look like a joke.

Yes, you pay more, but you get far more in return.

This would only suprise someone that hasn't a clue... as all us seasoned pro's knew this for the past 3 years... and ALL the companies do it.

Re:only affects newbies or the un-educated

[Reziac]

Actually, I've priced OEM and equivalent clone machines, and the OEM runs 30-50% higher every time -- even when using the exact SAME components.

But as you point out, with a clone you can pick the best of everything -- and it will STILL come in at a lower total price than the cheapest OEM crap. And the clone will be a much easier machine to upgrade and tweak.

Acto stats published by ComputerUser a few issues back, clones now have 40% of the market, vs. (this is from memory but should be close) 22% for Dell, 7% for HP/Compaq, 12% for Gateway, 3% for IBM. (Balance being various others that I forget.)

Considering the quality of the average clone vs the average OEM machine, no bloody wonder.

The only rational reason to buy name-brand is for a corporation that needs hundreds or thousands (or tens of thousands!!) of identical machines on short notice. OEMs can handle that. Clone builders can't.

Re:WOW, manufacturers don't make it easy for users

[digitalunity]

By design, it's not profitable to put the smart people on the phone. They're busy doing more important things. Tech support is an 'entry level' position, meaning that is where the dumbest, lowest payed personnel start until they have the ability to do something that pays better.

Pretty much, anyone smart enough to do the job really well is smart enough to work in a better position.

Hmm.. a similar incident occured the other day...

[TurdFerguson-x]

Yea.. the other day, I went into the local grocery store, and bought some groceries... but they told me that they would have to keep my food until I was starving, and could prove that I really needed it... then there would be an additional charge, and I would recieve my groceries in 6 - 8 weeks

Cutting costs.

[ImaLamer]

I can see this happening, and I'm not 100% against this. Of course a minimal set of recovery disks would be nice. The problem is with pre-loaded software. You shouldn't have boxes and manuals, but you are getting [buying] a license which you can't even use.

There are problems when you start to pre-load software. I bought a HP PC which came with a recovery CD. After using the PC for a few months I 'recovered' it a few times. It was an open-box buy, and I think the previous owner returned it because of a virus. Fixed that, recovered and broke it again over and over. All the times my fault.

But later on down the road I started to install other OS's and even different Windows versions. The problem was while I was under warrantee I couldn't select which software I wanted to restore. Basically I had Windows which I couldn't install, McAfee AV... couldn't install, numerous apps which I couldn't install.

So, they need to have a better recovery system. Take hint from the on-line install options made available from linux vendors[install via FTP today?]. Do something to ensure that users [lamers] can re-install the base and licensed software.

This is not new

[jdreed1024]

When I bought my Compudyne 486 from CompUSA, it came with Windows. When I asked "Where are the diskettes?", CompUSA replied "Oh, they're on the hard drive. You don't need floppies." When I insisted that I really did, they told me where they were located on the hard drive, and pointed me to a program they had written which would automatically create the windows floppies from the data on the HD.

Oh, and this was in 1993.

Re:17 CD's not on my Compaq...

[Glorat]

I have a Compaq Presario. It comes with a recovery partition of about 1-2Gbs (can't remember... having a 6Gb hard drive meant I wiped it). It did save my life once =) Now I honestly wonder why this HP needs 10GB of recovery data. That's really mad unless it also contains the image portions for the pre=installed Microsft Encarta!

Incidentally, my Compaq didn't come with a Win98 CD either although I do have the Win98 license in the form of a sticker stuck to the bottom of my laptop. I honestly didn't worry about the lack of Win98 CD since I never needed to upgrade drivers and in that one even when I *really* broke things, the recovery partition worked well.

Now, one day, my HD died completetly and I had it replaced. Of course, now I ended up without OS. What did I do? Installed Mandrake Linux on it. Duh!

Re:your best bet for recovery? Doubtful

[markj02]

Why not? I don't see anything wrong with buying an HP or Compaq or other consumer PC. Consumer PCs are often a very good deal, in particular when they go on sale before being replaced with the next model.

Fight back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just download the coporate edition from your favorite p2p service. And "upgrade". Do you think I care about a license if I can't even use it. Hell no! Make HP know your conditions of sale. Its not like there's anything that remarkable about their hardware. I mean when the Pentium IV's came out, the high end HP systems were selling with 16MB TNT2 cards for crying out loud! Now you know why Dell owns the market.

HP Claims Licensing Trouble

[_Sprocket_]

This has nothing to do with Microsoft's licencing or Windows XP or anything like that.

The claim made in the article reads:

Providing customers with both the CDs and the disk-based recovery program is not an option though, as that would violate HP's agreements with Microsoft and other software partners.

Granted - I find myself questioning how accurate this claim is. Is it HP officials going in to CYA mode? But at the same time, we've seen some odd things surface from the secret world of OEM licensing deals before.

Re:HP Claims Licensing Trouble

[Tony-A]

The OEM vendors are caught in the position of having to make the OS recoverable but not installable.
Microsoft Windows XP. You can fly. Off the handle, that is.

Re:HP Claims Licensing Trouble

[spudnic]

This makes no sense. All it takes is one ISO to get on a newsgroup and the world has it. Why inconvenience people just because of the stupid notion that people will only install from original CDs.

.

Re:HP Claims Licensing Trouble

[fyonn]

I don't understand this. why? I mean as far as I am concerned, if I buy a lappie with xp installed (god forbid ;) then I own a laptop and a licence to use xp. should the laptop get crushed by a rampaging tapir then I expect my licence to use xp to still be valid and I shold be able to install it on another machine. after all, I paid for the damn thing.

whats wrong with this logic?

dave

Re:HP Claims Licensing Trouble

[Tony-A]

whats wrong with this logic?

Microsoft is what's wrong with this logic.
Stupid isn't it?

Re:HP Claims Licensing Trouble

[fyonn]

well, in a situation like that, where I am happy that I am morally (to me at least :) in the right, then microsoft can kiss my shiny daffodil arse.

;)

dave

People who buy HP Pavillions won't buy a Mac.

[suss]

To solve the problem, buy a Mac.

Look at the price of a HP Pavillion.
Look at the price of a Mac.

See my point? People that buy HP Pavillions won't buy a Mac.

HP Pavillion Cheap, Mac Expensive.

I know someone who got a HP Pavillion, it's been back about 5 times too.
I think about everything that could break has broke down on the damn thing.

You get what you pay for.

Re:WOW, manufacturers don't make it easy for users

[Afrosheen]

That may be true, but in the current job market, there are lots of MCSE's, CCNA's and other overqualified people working tech support all over the place. Some companies are even unreasonable enough to require certs for simple tech support. Guess they'll be hiring alot of new people if/when the industry makes a comeback.

so I am not the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to upgrade an HP and it involved that little process plus removing a whole bunch of screws and it was quite annoying. But other than the generally poor design it has been far better than some of the Dells I have seen. At least it is not crash prone and even some of the components are better than Dell. Compared to the other options on the Comp USA self the HP has been more reliable than Compaq or Dell but hey you want a quality PC today your option is IBM.

Re:so I am not the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

And they all use a piece of shit HSP Micromodem.

The trouble to take any of those apart would be worth it if it didn't have that P.O.S modem.

That's why I don't buy name-brand computers

[Anonymous Coward]

I always build my own machine, and pirate a copy of Winblows for it. I've got Win95 upgrade, Win95OSR2, Win98 OEM, Win98SE OEM, WinME OEM, NT4 Server, NT4 Advanced Server, Win2k Pro, and Win2k Enterprise. I also used to have DOS 6.22 and WFW 3.11, but the disks failed. The only MS product I've ever bought was a copy of VB6 that I needed for my GUI design course at Uni., because my friend couldn't find his CDs, and I didn't have time to find a copy online.

HP's XP on my Pavilion was great!

[dermochelys]

The XP & recovery partitions on my ze1110 were fantastic . . . . I deleted both with no problems whatsoever as soon as I got it out of the box a month ago.

This news ticked me off, though. As soon as I read this an hour ago, I grabbed the shrink-wrapped XP stuff off the self and tore it open. Whattaya know? The little booklette that say Windows XP for distribution with a new PC only was just that - a booklette with no CD.

Interesting....

[Necronomicant]

Dell provides the microsoft CDROM for reinstallation along with a secondary cdrom containing all the applications. They don't do system restore at all ...... HP is hilarious.

All Day?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it took you all day to reinstall OS X on your Mac, there is something seriously wrong with you. Maintaining a Mac is simple, especially under OS X. If you encounter problems, the console application will always tell you what the problem is.

Re:WOW, manufacturers don't make it easy for users

[CrabCakeJimmy2k]

Hey! At least the guy you spoke to on the phone is probably smart enough to go and buy a $1.99 splitter for the hard drive instead of doing a half-assed splice job.

You're the kind of fella that makes tech support difficult. Just smart emough to figure out how to fuck things up.

Huh, what, OS X reinstall?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using it for quite a while, running 24hrs a day, doing c++ programming, Mathematica, SSH to xwindows, running classic, have it accessing AFS and SMB networks, and doing general word processing with Office v.X and I have only installed the OS twice, the first time and when I replaced a crashed hard drive. Also this is old news as I have been hassled trying to put windows on a compaq laptop that had a crashed hard disk, guess what call them they tell you to look for the d drive, eventually after explaining to the morons what is wrong talking to multiple people they determine you need a CD with the actual OS and send it to you free of charge. Compaq used to make reliable computers but not any more.

Re:Huh, what, OS X reinstall?

[screwtheNSA]

I had my LTE5300s crash fully and had to swap the CD drive for the floppy drive and connect my PCMCIA CD drive, copy any CD driver to C: and THEN, swap the floppy for the 6X drive the LTE came with and run the OEM disk first then the upgrade disk second. My OEM disk is OLD and the upgrade of 98 has drivers I use and delete garbage video drivers, modem drivers(who the hell uses ANY 14.4 or 33.6 modems for dialup service since 1990 anyhow? Why does MS keep GARBAGE like this? I am happy to need only one machine with this bloated, goat-smelling maggot-ware! Delete what you don't need, run msconfig and uncheck what doesn't need to be noticed on startup, like registration, AOL instant mangler, ALL DOS, system tray and whatever more I can keep off my start group to "speed" initial loading.

it can be done

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically it all will work except all that HP software crap and the DVD decoder card. I do not know I got one so cheap that if it blows up eh it was $600 a year ago for a 1ghz K7, 60gb HD, and DVD and CDRW. But today just go and buy a white box for $600 and install linux.

fuck you, spammer

[Anonymous Coward]

a subtle spam for mwave? fuck u.

Agreed. Except...

[mindstrm]

for laptops, which are increasingly important.

In fact.. I only HAVE laptops.

on that note..

My Vaio z505le... I should have thought harder before buying this 18 months ago.

It takes non-standard ram.
BIOS will only boot of a particular brand of external pcmcia cdrom (not scsi, either).

Thankfully my godlike powers let me rig up a convoluted process of partitioning, network booting, etc.

Laptops.. I'm really starting to wonder. Some officemates just picked up the latest Toshiba Satellites. Wow. 2 grand...
Beautiful display, dvd, smartmedia reader, SD, big hard drive, 512MB, firewire/usb/etc. The works, basically.
All I could really want in a PC.. even being the PC nut that I am.
ANd when I have to go travelling.. I can take my army of PC's with me.

Stream eats my cock.

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad you got the fuck out of that hell-hole. Stream really sucks.

Re:HP: the corporate software pirates

[mindstrm]

Are you for real?

In every country where they have a distribution agreement with Microsoft?

Re:WOW, manufacturers don't make it easy for users

[neuroticia]

Yeah. Tell me about it. Whenever I'm having an "issue" my unenlightened friends tell me I should contact Tech Support. I tell them I'd have better luck going to an analyst on Park Avenue to have my computer's head shrunk. =]

The tech support people for most businesses are trained to handle the "bulk" of users who are having problems turning their computer on, turning it off, figuring out the difference between the "keyboard" and "mouse" icons on the back of their computers, etc. A few of them have probably even answered my Grandma's question about "Why do I need to fondle the mouse's butt?"... Can't blame the companies for the most part, though. The majority of the questions they recieve *are* along those lines.

Maybe Slashdotters should start phoning in more complex questions. Might have an impact on the Tech support industry-- high paid intelligent tech support people.

Hey, I can dream.

-Sara

HP Contractually Prohibited?

[Observer2001]

According to this article, in 2000 Microsoft adopted a policy that "hardware manufacturers who license Windows directly from Microsoft [may] no longer ship a full backup CD of the OS." Unless Microsoft has changed its policy, HP may be contractually prohibited from shipping actual XP backup media with its systems.

Re:HP Contractually Prohibited?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. At best, HP would have to purchase full XP licenses at the retail rate, which is quite a bit more expensive, and margins are slim in the OEM business. This is part of what the antitrust trial was about... or should have been about, at least.

Re:HP Contractually Prohibited?

[bromoseltzer]

I think you're right and 95% of the comments here are off-topic. It's not about poor tech support or saving a buck on CD's, it's about Microsoft's desire to eliminate "piracy" of its OS product.

And beyond that, it's about the Gov placing intellectual property law above personal freedom of the do-it-yourself & hacker community.

-Soon to be EFF member.

Make Your Own!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have to pay anything to HP..I made my own damn recovery cd's..here's how:

1. blow away crappy XP NTFS partition

2. install Linux :)

3. dd if=/dev/hda1 of=hp_image.iso

4. split hp_image.iso -size 650/700Mb

5. cdrecord hp_image_X.iso -dev=/dev/scd0 -speed=12

6. all done..cost to user..about 1-2 hours, and 3-4.00 of CD-R's..

Of course, YMMV and all that stuff..

Re:Sad News - Goatse.cx guy DEAD

[Anonymous Coward]

He will be missed :(

By the goats, anyway...

Re:Then they want to crack down on pirated OS copi

[ewhac]

Run Linux...then you can forget about MS licensing and HPs retarded policy.

Not only that, but if you're visited by the BrownShirts from the BSA, you can send them packing.

Schwab

No

[TFloore]

I really want to know where this attitude came from. We need to find the business schools that teach that the proper way to make profits is by screwing your customers, and close these schools.

Just why is everyone so willing to say and do this, anyway? "If we don't screw the cusotmer, we'll go out of business"??? I'd much rather it were the other way around.

You do NOT check your morals and ethics at the door when you go to work.

Re:No

[geekoid]

It is caused by compitition.
If your competition sells a computer for 799.99, no cds, and you sell the same computer for 819.99, you competitor will get most of the sales, and you will fold.

Having owned a computer shop, I can assure of 2 things:
1)the pc market in incredible hard to make a buck in.
2)people will complain about service, but they'll take cheap with no service before more exoensive with service, evertime

If Microsoft wanted to look really good right now, at a minimal expense, they would require systems sold with there OS to come with a cd.

What kind of local PC shop you got.

[systemaster]

My local shop, milwaukee PC(milwaukeepc.com) will NOT sell me a system with blank hard drive. And boy did I try, I called/stopped in a dozen time talking to different people, and they won't give a system out without a HD full of crap. Nor will they sell a system without a harddrive. They suck, I'm switching to mac, have you seen the latest imac(apple.com) it rocks! OK, maybe I can't drop x86ers completly, but MPC does suck.
this sig is a virus, take it and use it.

Re:What kind of local PC shop you got.

[Pointed Stick]

You need to find a new computer shop friend. Any mom and pop place that won't sell you a computer without a hard drive full of crap won't be around for long. I'm from Kansas City and I've got dozens of shops to choose from. I bet you can find one who will build you the computer you want somewhere in Milwaukee.

Cheers!

Splice job

[neuroticia]

Actually if I were smart I would have bought a $30 dollar case with enough room for everything, and a power supply capable of handling 5 devices. I actually did research that and splitters before I snipped the floppy, but it was 2 AM, I wanted Linux on my machine and didn't feel like waiting for a splitter.

So not only am I dumb, I'm also obsessive compulsive. =] But at least I don't call tech support about that! *grin*

-Sara

This is being done for lease computers

[dregs]

Microsoft states in the EULA, that when machines change hands, ie end of lease, the licence can only be transfered with

1. Original Hologram/Sticker on device
2. All media supplied with computer
3. any manuals supplied.

This causes problems as if you lease 1000 computers a year, like we do, you need to keep all the CD's some where for 3 years, and then hand it on at the end of lease.

We don't want CD's with our machines, and our supplier insists on giving them to us, because of the particular licence they have with MS.

The cost of storeing the CD's and getting them back to the machine as it goes back is not insignificant.

Dave..

Compaq is just as bad

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked at CompUSA as a tech I did refurbs when I was starting out. We got a batch of Compaqs around 25 that were all returned. All the same models all in the same shipment.

Those were really bad. I believe each one of them had a completly different problem.

HPs older computers were really rock solid those components wouldnt die. Over the last couple years though they've gone down the tube.

Compaqs, minus their corporate computers, are giant paper weights. Might as well call them Packard Bells

Another reason to buy "white box"

[alizard]

On a no-name computer, the mom-and-pop reseller generally sells a REAL OS separately. Not a recovery disk, and not a hard drive partition with recovery information.

Of course, we all know why full OS disks don't go on machines with pre-installed Microsoft OSs, but what do you expect when you deal with M$?

White boxes are generally built of standard parts. No proprietary motherboards or other ugly surprises. Much nicer if the vendor is gone and the computer breaks.

Is HP "too big to fail"? Two words. Compaq. Merger.

While a "recovery disk" is no substitute for an OS, it's somewhat better than nothing if the problem calls for no more than reformatting and a reinstall. If you backed your data up, you shortly get back a working computer.

HP deciding that a drive partition is a substitute for a working OS and making customers jump through hoops to buy something that was supposed to come with a computer simply tells us that there's no longer any further reason to buy HP.

I tell my friends to buy "white box", not name brand. I'm now telling them specifically to avoid Hewlett-Packard.

Too bad. I've got a 1987 HP laser printer that puts out print just as clean as it did when it was new. Too bad only the name is left from the company that built it.

Tech support over the phone is hell...

[Kjella]

Both to use and give, IMO. I've tried doing it (for friends/family), and it's hopeless unless I know exactly what the problem is. And it's paradoxal, if you need to call tech support, it probably means you don't have the skills to provide the nessecerry information to tech support anyway, nor to assess the scope of the problem.

A friend of mine was asked to reinstall from recovery cd (had to ask for it, didn't ship with originals *or* recovery cds *or* recovery partition), which was basicly a loading a disk image wiping everything. I extracted the one missing file from the .cabs, installed it and it was fixed, no thanks to Windows' dependency checking - it allowed a dll to be removed that prevented Windows from even booting. Could that have been done over the phone? No, because you've no idea if there's a hundred files deleted (virus, these files take too much space I'll delete them, etc.), or just one.

Where I worked this summer the Laptop wouldn't boot. Cause? Presumably win98 driver issue, but fundamentally non-resolvable. Booted in safe mode, all drivers looked ok, but no go. The tech support genius descided to wipe&reinstall, only the no-brainer (or well, in part due to a misunderstanding too) did, including all the data that was there. If he'd just wiped the Program Files dir, Windows dir and registry, then installed all would be nice, but noooooo. Wipe clean and start over. Seems to be tech support tool #1, #2 and #3

Kjella

Oy...from a tech's point of view.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't work at HP, but I work at another of the biggies and a similar process is in place.

a) Hundreds of calls everyday come in where the customer lost/damaged/ate the original recovery CD and needs a second copy. Having this on a hard disk partition has WAY increased the "happy" level of stupid customers.

b) Corporate customers use their own image, ghost, pqdi, or unattended install of some sort. This shouldn't be an issue for them.

c) The minority of the customers fall BETWEEN a and b, they aren't a huge company but aren't a home user. They've mucked up the hard disk and in most (not all) they've created an issue by ignoring the pieces of paper the computer comes with and installing Linux. If you are installing Linux, you should know enough about computers to stop the problems from happening in the first place.

Disclaimer: None of these points mentions hardware failure which does generate about 30-40% of the calls to a tech support center. In these cases, I've heard the companies send out a restore CD with the hard disk if needed.

Laptop line

[felipeal]

Just for the record, a friend of mine bought an HP zt1180 laptop (which is a "HP pavilion notebook pc", as noted in the box) recently, and it DOES come with a set of recovery CDs, 3 at total (I know because I'm planning to buy one too, and I was wondering if I could sell the OEMed XP that comes with it), so the problem must be only in the desktop line (the original article doesn't make distinction between then)

HP = sux0r

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I've got an HP. I tried asking them once if it's possible to upgrade the CPU in my comp. They never gave me a clear answer...

-- Inuchance

For a good computer...

[Anonymous Coward]

...check out Angel Computers (http://www.angelcomputer.com) and bask in the goodness of being able to select a MS OS, Red Hat Linux, or no OS at all.

Re:HA.. Looks like HP is adopting Compaq's evil wa

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked for a call center that Best Buy and Circut City use, the parts suppliers for Compaq and HP send out lots of refurbished parts. The whole business sucks. I couldn't take having to tell customers to use the restore cd for every little problem as well as reording the fifth cdrom drive for someone because all the others were bad.

au contraire

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article: And why did HP feel obliged to ask why customers needed the CDs? Callers were told it was due to HP's "contractual obligations" to Microsoft.

Microsoft doesn't want people to have these CDs, and they've got a good reason for that decision:
sell more WinXP in the stores. The contractual obligation stipulates that recovery CDs are not to be given out without a damned good excuse.

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Too stupid to build your own computer and paying for it? At HPKrashes.com, we'll irrevocably crash your new HP computer over the Internet so that HP will send you your recovery disks before you REALLY need them. Using our unique "Zerorific" technology (silly patent pending), we transform your state-of-the-art-yet-pedestrian computer into an overpriced paperweight in the blink of an eye!

Watch in amazement as your hard drive spins in consternation, failing to find the boot sector! Gape at the "Non-system disk or error" message in astonishment. Be filled with gratitude as the slightly battered packet of CDs arrives at your house to save your utter lack of a life! Gnash your teeth in frustration as your neophyte mind navigates the labyrinthine maze of twisting decisions that comprise the install program!

How much would you pay for this? DON'T ANSWER YET-- There's More! For a limited time we'll also bundle this free CueCat(tm) faux-barcode reader! Be the first on your block to experience the shame of owning one of these useless technology doohickeys! You can even vent your sexual frustration on it!

Operators are standing by. To order all this for $19.95, call now!

(the above was a joke. No disrespect toward the real HPKrashes.com, the backbone of this great Internet)

Word! FIC, old h/w, etc...

[Suburban nmate]

FID AD-11 = utter shite, dies total dead after a few weeks, didn't recognise my Promise FastTrack 100 (RAID), and now i cant get a friggin refund! I bought it on the strength of a good review in Micromart. shoulda researched deeper i think. it always pays to do a quick search for bad reports of new hardware; monitors, drives, heatsinks, girlfriends etc...

A few months of saving later and i got me an Asus A7V 266-E, and an Asus Geforce3 Ti200 card.... Mmmmmm....!! :-) I Haven't looked back.

I've had a couple WD drives fail too, and an IBM 20 gig, which i also saw a few bad reports of on a quick google search. i have 2x IBM Deskstar 60 GXP 40gb on my raid card... no problems so far.

As i remember the WD drive that caused the most problems failed with a few weeks or freezes and painful stuttering and delayed access. when it finally gave out, a high powered air rifle made a good mess of it.

The morals? Speed is rareley top priority when buying hardware. GeForce 3 cards rareley differ much from nVidia's reference board, so speed accross the board is pretty equal. The difference is the drivers supplied, and any software bundles etc... by the way check out http://www.tvtool.de/index_e.htm for better TV drivers. :)

In the long run its a good idea to take time out from Ebuyer, however tempting it is to order right there and then, and do some half decent research on the product you might buy, and any that might appear and make you think "oh crap, shoulda waited for that!".

Ali [ @ london d0t c0m ]

Not True in REAL life

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen an Thinkpad X20 with XP, system restore, that restore to system default didtn even help. The only way out was reformat and reinstall.

Ditto on Windows ME, on an IBM desktopsystem. In fact, I would say system restore on ME is far more dubious than its on XP, its NOT hard to get it into an state beyond the point of no return, and have to reformat.

Ok maybe Im missing something

[sargon666777]

In the article it stated that HP said it would require to many CD's to get it to the customer. Now let me make some assumptions. 1. I Imagine almost all of the HPS come with a DVD Rom. I don't know if this is true, but considering the cost of CDR/DVD-ROM the price is almsot identical from a sales issue,a nd its a selling point. So on that assumption... Why not put it on 1 DVD-ROM? Just an idea.. Im going to go check HP out and see if DVD is standard.. Feel free to correct me if Im wrong

Re:Ok maybe Im missing something

[sargon666777]

BTW I looked and it appears that not all, but most are indeed with a DVD ROM by default. Only the cheap ones appear to have CD's. *shrug* I build all my own stuff anyhow.

On a funny note

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats it... Time for me to whip out DesqView and IBM Dos 5.0. Thats all I need for multitasking!!!

Sony Vaios, PC World and information from vendors

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

My girlfriend recently purchased a Sony Vaio notebook, and we had exactly this problem. We went into our local PC World in Cambridge, UK, and asked one of the obviously-commission-based sales guys to help us. After all, they were all going past and offering to give us any "technical information" we might want to know. Actually, we got through several of them, and they were all as bad as each other.

None of them could answer the simple question "If I completely blanked the hard drive, could I reinstall everything to the state it's in now from the media supplied with the system?" Does anyone have a problem understanding that? Is it not clear exactly what I'm asking?

Eventually, we gave up in disgust, and went to our local Sony Centre. There, a young lad -- apparently very nervous and on his first day -- understood what I was asking. He didn't know the answer but was happy to go find a colleague who did. He came back two minutes later, and explained that with the recovery disks supplied, we could reinstall up to three times, max, but yes, we could get WinXP back on there from a blank system. (It was something to do with product activation, he claimed, and making the disk work only with that specific PC...) We bought the notebook.

I think this goes to show that not only are MS trying to get recovery disks out in place of original media via the big-name vendors, those vendors are also pretty bad at telling the sales guys what they're actually shipping. Personally, I would never buy a system that I didn't know for sure could be reinstalled from the disks supplied. If I'm paying for WinXP, I expect to be able to use it, without dumb conditions imposed if anything goes wrong (or I choose to install ME for a while until all the security fixes in XP are worked out, which is a perfectly sensible thing to be considering). Sad thing is, most customers won't know any better and will put up with this sort of behaviour, which is why MS will get away with it.

To do that you need a clue

[gotan]

And people with a clue probably wouldn't have bought a PC without recovery CDs in the first place. But anyway, most people out there who can't or don't want to go through so much trouble to get to their recovery disks (which are then probably illegal too).
--

Re:To do that you need a clue

[Reziac]

Yeah, I had that exact same thought while writing that -- why would anyone with half a clue buy such a crippled PC in the first place?

But a lot of us who HAVE a full set of clues get to *support* completely clueless people who BOUGHT such PCs, so I figured it was worth making the post.

Two cases about Toshiba and recovery media

[jsveiga]

1.
My Satellite 1805-S254 came with XP Home (won't make network logons although "help" shows how to do it - made me spend hours figuring what was wrong with my Samba!!), and NTFS partition.

I wanted to reinstall with FAT32 for a better dual-boot with Linux integration. The provided install media is a ghost image, and won't offer partitioning options!! I've contacted Toshiba support, and got no solution. I had to "borrow" a Partition Magic 7 XP to be able to convert it to FAT32, then go on with (parted) repartition and install Linux.

Now didn't I PAY for this Windows XP copy?? Why can't I choose how to install it?? Is this one more way of MS pushing vendors to make it harder for Linux?

2.
My boss' Satellite 2180CDT (yes this is a rare company where the boss don't get the newest notebook) needed a reinstall. The "Configuration Builder CD (Win98SE)" said it was the "Wrong Machine" and wouldn't let me use it. I found a comment in the Toshiba/Compuserve forum saying a clean formatted HD would not present the problem. Guess what: it didn't. On the same forum, a helpful Tosh Team said there was a small program to correct this. I asked for the program, but while I was waiting, I found out how to bypass the machine check routine and managed to install from the CD.

I've posted the simple procedure (basically you need to run a .bat directly from the CD) on the forum (that seems to be a common problem). The kind Tosh Team guy removed my post from "public view", and kindly told me not to "post methods for bypassing software copyright protection on a public forum". He did send me the workaround program (which I didn't use nor see what it does, but it seems like it "creates" the correct machine ID for the checking program).

I was not posting a copyright circumvention method, but a way of being able to install a software my company has PAID FOR, bypassing a BUG on the recovery CD. What is I didn't have internet access and wanted to reinstall? Would I have to wait for the patch diskette vie snail mail??

If we are paying for the bundled Windows license, shouldn't we get a DECENT and USABLE installation media, instead of a crippled ghost image or a poorly designed "copyright protection" mechanism that doesn't work right and it's plain naive??

If we paid for the bundled windows license, can't i chose to uninstall it from the hardware it came in, and install it somewhere else?? If not, everytime a notebook goes to retirement (or is converted into a linux network backup appliance, as it happened to some of our retired notebooks), shouldn't I be entitled to a refund??

TOSHIBA: I WANT MY XP AND 98SE INSTALLATIONS DISKS!!

They're whiners.

[Lonath]

They get a copy on the HD, a BACKUP copy on the HD, and the copy in memory. That's three copies of the Proprietary Digital Content for just one low price. Now they want a *fourth* copy? A copy that could conceivably be copied or (shudder) GIVEN to someone else, even temporarily? A copy that isn't physically tied down to one machine? WTF didn't they notice that little thing called the DMCA? They don't have those rights anymore. All you people: it's time to wake up and pay for a temporary nasal stimulation license so you can smell the digitally stored and manufactured coffee aroma content!

Re:They're whiners.

[Bossofall]

I totally agree and also think this is becoming very dangerous. Very soon a push is going to start, to remove content from consumer control altogether. Our way of life is in greet peril and most of us don't even know it. Next there will be a moral debate started and then a campaign started to sway public opinion. Right now it looks silly enough. Just remember though that "silly" is one of the best tools for appearing benign.

Re:They're whiners.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at one of the big computer guys, it's not a content control matter, it's realistically saving approx. 27 cents per machine that is shipped. It's not some comspiracy, it's the paper pushers, and the first level support doesn't agree either, but they have a job to do.

Re:They're whiners.

[Bossofall]

Fair enough, I won't argue with someone from the front lines, but, there are other examples. A trial is underway to try and get people to store their mp3's online, so they can be charged per listen (and obviously not share with friends). Application servers are the same thing. I have just noticed a marketing trend which seems aimed at controlling and/or removing content from peoples computers. I find it funny that as our machines get faster and can hold more, the idea that they shouldn't seems to grow stronger. I don't think it's a conspiracy just sound business, that saves money and sometimes protects intellectual property. As sound as the reasons might be I still perceive a very real threat to our way of life.

Simple solution.

[billcopc]

Return the fricking HP piece of shit for a refund. Buy a better OEM-built PC for half the price, and buy WinXP at the OEM rate if you are so inclined. If you're bright enough to know that you need the recovery CDs, then you probably can get around on your own without HP's customer support, so why bother with them in the first place ?

Wal-Mart'ian computers like HPs and Compaqs are fine for people who can barely tell you what the mouse is, because you just plug-in and go. Essentially, they're for people who don't really need a computer in the first place, they just want to 'download the internet'. If you're not that kind of newbie, you're much better off with a custom-built system. You'll have better quality components (if you choose to), and if something dies, you can replace it yourself in no time. With a brand-name PC, you'd probably have to ship it back to the company, or at least wait a couple days for a fast-talking support agent to knock on your door.

A little mental effort is worth a lot.

Product Activation should equal OS CD

[IsThisNickTaken]

Although I don't agree with the practice, I understand Microsoft not wanting OEMs to ship Windows CDs with computers since it made pirating easy.

Now that XP has the wonderful product activation to prevent pirating they should start shipping at least 2 CDs with all systems. The first should be the Windows XP CD and the second should contain all necessary drivers. Also, if the computer comes with Office, ship the Office CDs.

I made sure this PC had a CD before I bought it.

[The Monster]

I browsed the HDs of HPs in the store, saw that there was a 4-gig "Recovery Partition" with all of those .CABs in it. I asked the salesman if there was also a (set of) CD(s) in case the HD failed, and he said "no". I found this to be true of most new PC brands with XP installed, but the fine folks at Micro Center have their PowerSpec brand that uses a set of 2 CDs instead. Once I verified that this set of CDs would never require Evil Activation (so long as I don't flash my BIOS with a non PowerSpec image), I knew that I had something I could live with (especially with a 2nd HD to run other OSes from).

Re:17 CD's not on my Compaq...

[theancient2]

I have a Compaq with the "recovery partition" concept, too. It has 20 GB disk and they took 5 GB of that for the recovery partition. (Only 1.2 GB of that was actually used -- the rest, I assume, was for some backup feature I never used.)

The thing that really annoyed me was that they advertised the system as having a 20 GB disk, and it wasn't until you got it home that you discovered only about 13 GB of that was actually free space you could use.

One argument to rule them all

[kindbud]

"Because I'm going to return this POS Pavilion pile if you don't, that's why."

"Yes sir, the disk is on its way."

Dell? Dell? You think Dell is any good?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the more reason to buy a decent system from Dell,

Dell is particularly shitheaded about supporting their systems.

I bought a Dell, and of course Windows was unable to feed the CD/RW fast enough to keep it from failing on large burns. I called Dell about this problem, and while I was waiting a resolution, I installed a second hard disk.

Because I installed a second hard disk, I had voided my warrantee. The fact that the problem had nothing to do with the second disk (as proven by the fact that it didn't work before adding it, and still didn't work after removing it) didn't matter, they took absolutely no responsibility for the problem any longer. "Don't call us" they said.

Decent system from Dell, my ass.

Thank God that Linux has no problems at all with the hardware.

Re:Buy a Mac... with GREAT recovery options.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too many Mac users are aware of this (as they rarely need to use the recovery CD ;) ), but the Recovery CD that's included with all newer Macs is very, VERY spiffy.

It has these three options for recovery:

1. System Restore - returns that Mac to factory-fresh condition

2. Restore In-Place - just restores system components provided by Apple without touching anything outside of the System Folder - Doesn't always solve all problems, but a good thing to try... see next option.

3. Restore Preserving Previous Contents - moves all of your old data in to a folder called "Previous Items" (or something similar) and then does a fresh install of everything so the Mac is back to factory-fresh condition, but has the one additional folder with all the old stuff so that you can pick and choose what you want to keep from there.

And, as mentioned above, you could also just do everything yourself with the OEM OS CD if you'd like.

Who says Apple doesn't think about their customers and only focuses on what's "cool"? :)

Tech Support Nightmare

[gessleX]

I unforunately work for a local ISP. Just wanted to start off by that statement.

I had a customer call in with a TCP/IP stack issue which normally is fixed by the removal TCP from network and/or removal of the Communications component and reinstalling it.

Little did I know that the restoration CD fro HP Pavilion with Windows ME, was not a full Windows CD as typical with most restores. Instead, it was an image of the hard drive spread across several CDs.

Please insert the Windows Millenium CD? Um, take your pick.

Re:Sony Vaios, PC World and information from vendo

[fyonn]

3 times only? a) how does it know? and b) why limit it. you've paid for xp to be on it, fair and square as I see it

god I'm feelin belligerent today

dave

If you have the license, make a copy of the CD.

[slaida1]

As I see it, one license means one copy of XP and that's it. It doesn't matter where that copy is from as long as it is the same product you have the license for.

Go on and make a copy of your friend's XP CD set. You've paid for, it's legal and at the same time you'll learn how easy it really is to make copies of everything.

Great troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

We could start the Apple vs PC discussion again. I thought this was settled 3 years ago.

Just another troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Session Start: Fri Feb 15 00:41:14 2002
Session Ident: falbe
Session Ident: falbe (EFnet) (falbe@ti231210a080-0154.bb.online.no)
15 00:41 <falbe> hack, hack
15 01:16 <falbe> reterrey ry ry e rew et 436 64 546 yt h fgu u65 75 rdy dddh 66 685 9 0987 32 2 gyrr uytru tru tru
15 01:16 <falbe> reterrey ry ry e rew et 436 64 546 yt h fgu u65 75 rdy dddh 66 685 9 0987 32 2 gyrr uytru tru tru
15 01:16 <falbe> reterrey ry ry e rew et 436 64 546 yt h fgu u65 75 rdy dddh 66 685 9 0987 32 2 gyrr uytru tru tru
15 01:17 <falbe> tru bla bla bwet 4y 43y43 rtuy tr utr uty uty ut uty uytu ytu ytu t utt utyubla bla bwet 4y 43y43 rtuy tr utr uty uty ut uty uytu ytu ytu t utt utyu bla bla bwet 4y 43y43 rtuy tr utr uty uty ut uty uytu ytu ytu t utt utyu bla bla bwet 4y 43y43 rtuy tr utr uty uty ut uty uytu ytu ytu t utt utyubla bla bwet 4y 43y43 rtuy tr utr uty uty ut uty uytu ytu ytu t utt utyubla bla bwet 4y 43y43 rtuy tr utr uty uty ut uty uytu ytu ytu t utt utyubla bla b
15 01:17 <falbe> utr
15 01:17 <falbe> utr
15 01:17 <falbe> utr
15 01:17 <falbe> utr
15 01:17 <falbe> urt
15 01:17 <falbe> utr
15 01:17 <falbe> utr
15 01:17 <falbe> tur
15 01:17 <falbe> hack, hack
Session Close: Fri Feb 15 01:32:36 2002

XP Recovery

[SirKron]

Need a recovery CD? Morpheous: search for Windows XP.