The Recovery Disc Rip-Off

nk497 writes "The chances of finding a recovery disc at the bottom of a PC box is getting slimmer, as vendors instead take the cheaper option of installing recovery software on a hard disk partition, leaving the buyer with no physical copy of the operating system they paid for if (or when) the hard disk fails. Users can burn a backup disc, but many aren't as diligent as they should be. While some PC vendors will offer a free or cheap disc at the time of purchase, buying one — or even tracking one down — after the fact can be expensive and take weeks to arrive. 'I've had a lot of people that have had this problem,' said David Smith, director of independent maintenance company Help With Your PC. 'One customer recently found his hard drive had gone, but by the time he'd paid £50 for the recovery disc, paid for a new hard drive and paid for the labour of installing the device, it made more sense to buy a new machine.'"

Comments

It's down to the cost of one disk?

[Trip6]

That's how close we're watching costs these days?

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[Moryath]

I don't see why they don't do this anyways. And they don't need the BIOS to do it.

You have your serial number on the sticker on the box. The OEM license discs won't take the non-OEM serial.

Just publish the ISO image to their FTP site, say "here it is, download/burn it wherever", and be done with it.

The real answer is that their "built-in burn your own backup" software is a ruse: first they fuck you over not including a real recovery disc separate from the hard drive, then the OEMs (Dell especially) spam ads all over the fucking screen about buying the "upgraded backup software which will back up your personal documents" while you wait for it to burn the fucking DVD at 0.5x speeds.

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[commodore64_love]

>>>I can't say I blame them.

I can. It's cheaper for them to run-off a million or so DVD Restore Discs, with discounted pricing, then for me to run to the store, buy a DVD blank, and record a restore disc. (That's what my new HP Compaq computer expects me to do.) I'd rather pay an extra 10 cents on the purchase price and get the disc.

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[n4f]

If the burn even works. I have a Compaq laptop that came preloaded with Windows Vista. Tried burning the recovery because I wanted to wipe the drive, reclaim my 8 gigs by deleting the recovery partition, and install Ubuntu. It would get through 99% of the burn and then just fail randomly. After going through half a dozen DVD-R's, I just gave up.

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how close we're watching costs these days?

No - this is part of "encouraging" people to buy a new PC instead of fixing their old PC. Today, I am finding people that are throwing away dual and quad core PCs because the repair costs are so high.

Microsoft go out of their way to ensure that refurbishers can't just reinstall the original version of Windows. They make it difficult for consumers to reimage their PCs easily.

If they did that, who would buy a new PC?

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[jedidiah]

> And just how the fuck do you expect a presumably novice computer user to just download an ISO image somewhere and burn it? You might as well tell them to use Linux; it would be just about as useless to them.

If the old OS is any good, it will be made easy for him.

If the old OS is crap, then he's got extra incentive to dump it.

There is no good reason why burning an ISO in 2010 should be hard in any OS.

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[mlts]

The stickler in this is that crapware merchants pay PC vendors to have their stuff shoveled onto machines, so it will be present everywhere unless one installs from true OS media. So shipping true Windows media isn't in the PC company's best interest because it means fewer installs and fewer chances of getting handed cash when someone upgrades or activates the crapware.

Re:It's down to the cost of one disk?

[sorak]

To add a ten-year old gripe to that, why is it that the web browser and the media player are "part of the operating system", but hardware support for CD burning didn't come along until XP, and support for common cd standards, such as ISO format still hasn't become common?

Gotta wonder...

[The MAZZTer]

... how many Windows "pirates" actually own a legitimate product key but have simply no install CD/DVD.

I hate having to be the one to say it...

[randomaxe]

...but every Mac I've ever bought has had install discs for the OS and any additional applications in the box. They are rarely needed, since Time Machine does a fantastic job of providing a backup that I can restore to, but they are there.

That in itself might be worth the so-called "Apple Tax".

One Of The Best Things About Being A Mac User

[Ukab the Great]

Is that Apple gives you a real bonafide OS disc with the computer you buy.

Re:One Of The Best Things About Being A Mac User

[ducomputergeek]

Depends, how much is your time worth? Before I bought my dad an iMac, it was 3 - 4 hours every time I visited cleaning crap off his computer and usually 6 hours around christmas every year to wipe the drive and reinstall. So probably around 15 hours a year. Since I bought him the iMac and he got over the initial how to questions in the first weeks, I've spent a grand total of 2 hours in 3 years upgrading from OS 10.5 to 10.6 on his machine last christmas.

Not having to deal with that crap when I visit, worth every penny of the apple tax.

Re:Usage

[petermgreen]

Personally I like what dell does with thier buisness machines. The discs they ship (at least the XP ones, I haven't tried the vista or win7 ones) are windows install CDs (not "recovery CDs") that use the normal windows installer, don't insist on wiping the hard drive, don't seem to install andy crapware and yet provided you install them on a dell they will install without any activation BS.

Re:why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows

[Locutus]

probably because Microsoft is the one behind this mess. they want you to purchase a new computer with a new copy of Windows or go out and purchase a new licensed CD. They don't want standard Windows installation discs on the market because it is easier to find a product key to use than it is to get a working Windows install CD.

Remember when you got a copy of the standard installation discs with the PC? You could get the OS installation, not a modified and customized imaging-only type of CD but a full installation disc. Microsoft got the idea that if you had that disc, you would install it on many computers even though it was illegal to do so. Then came the custom installation or imaging CD which only worked on your computer or one exactly like it. Windows activation followed and then the elimination of the CD all together and only a recovery partition which was tied to your boot sector so installing Linux or any other OS or boot manager meant your recovery sector was useless.

To follow Microsoft's marketing speak, 'Customers have asked for a simpler way to install Microsoft Windows and we believe putting the software on the fastest media, the hard disk, is what's best for the customer.' It's all bull and more talk to best scrap your wallet clean. IMO

Me, I just download an ISO from ubuntu.com, linuxmint.com, fedoraproject.org, opensuse.org, knoppix.net, etc and move on.

LoB