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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.'"
All they would have to do, is have MICROSOFT to crack down on the practice, and the disks would come back. LOL...heck, more than likely MS is the one behind this, trying to save money not having to ship disks.
being able to download my OS from the internet for free!
But then you have to be more diligent in choosing hardware for your PC. Sure, a Free operating system based on Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.) supports a wide array of hardware. But if you happen to buy a piece of hardware at the store that's not on the distribution's hardware compatibility list, it probably won't include a Linux driver on a disc either. Now what?
Huh, a music CD is a sequence of digitally encoded sectors, one after the other, with error detection and correction. Ripping it to disk files, computer performance should be TOTALLY IRRELEVANT on the face of it. Maybe if you used a half decent ripping tool ... CDDA Paranoia . Of course, that tool only runs on a real operating system ... linux.
Seriously dude. Linux dose not want you.
For the pedantic Linux/GNU fanboys... Yes I realize it's Linux/GNU or GNU/Linux what ever.
It is the one with the penguin on the box. Right? :)
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Given that the hardware in every Dell I've ever used has been utter shit (seriously, they shipped my employer several dozen desktops, and when they couldn't get dual monitors working via DVI, they comped us a bunch of VGA splitters. THAT WAS THEIR SOLUTION.), I like that "Apple Tax" very much, thank you.
Sorry, I could have warned you. I bought an HP tablet a few years ago-- never again!
HP products are crap. The hardware actually runs decently, but they piss all over the software, don't give you an OS DVD, treat you like shit on the phone when you call up and ask for the OS DVD. (Oh, and don't bother anyway-- the DVD from HP actually, unbelievably, has all the crapware ON IT! You can't restore Windows without restoring the crapware. I paid fucking $20 for that useless-ass disk.)
Meanwhile, last time I bought a Dell, it shipped with zero crapware (I think the browser homepage was changed, and it had a support program to upgrade drivers that I don't consider crapware because it didn't show me ads or slow computer performance.) They included a CLEAN OS DVD, with Dell's own programs on another (optional) disk. And when I called them up, even though the call center was in India, they sent me a spare wifi card for free, going above and beyond the warranty period. (Turns out the problem was software related.)
I'm not saying Dell is the best option out there, but I can guarantee I'm sure as hell never buying an HP again.
Comment of the year
Don't forget that the Apple Tax is completely offset by what people pay for getting a PC fixed up.
Take 3 years of operation on a $2000 Mac for a non-technical person. Other than software, it may not need a thing.
Take 3 years of operation on a generic Windows machine that costs $500. Say Windows needs to be reinstalled every six months, with infections randomly interspersed out, about twice a year. The reinstalls at the PC shop cost $100, the copy of Windows 7 costs $100 (wasn't bundled with the machine), and the cleaning of malware costs $200 each time. Total cost of machine after 3 years will be near the $2000 paid for the Mac.
For someone who knows what they are doing, this isn't an issue, but for someone non technical, a Mac may work out to be a far better bargain because they can use the machine, not have it dropped by a shop every so often.