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

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.