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.

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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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).

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...

[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: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: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: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?