The Recovery Disc Rip-Off 551
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.'"
It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's how close we're watching costs these days?
Gotta wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Micro$oft (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the real goal is to make it more difficult to get away from the manufacturer's preinstalled bloatware.
why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows (Score:3, Insightful)
why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows that just need your key that is on the COA so you don't need to torrent the iso?
Infuriating (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, perhaps the Linux zealot faction should welcome the "no OS discs" trend. Faced with a machine where you have had to replace the HDD, it is nowadays much easier to obtain and install Linux than to get your hands on the media from which to re-install Windows.
I hate having to be the one to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
That in itself might be worth the so-called "Apple Tax".
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
One Of The Best Things About Being A Mac User (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that Apple gives you a real bonafide OS disc with the computer you buy.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>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? (Score:3, Insightful)
For anyone not Apple. Look at what happened with Dell. Basically since 2005 they made almost nothing on PC sales. Something like 70% of their operating income came from kick backs from Intel. It's one of the reasons why I don't buy PC's these days. It's been a race to the bottom and to see who can cut the most corners without completely going under.
It's all about the cheddar (Score:3, Insightful)
Well two things (Score:3, Insightful)
1) You can remove the partition easy enough.
2) Are you hurting for disk space on a new system? Hell I just bought a laptop a couple months ago and it has 500GB of disk space in it. A *laptop* has that much. Desktops are no problem to get with 1TB or more. Are you really going to miss 10-20GB of that?
I mean I reinstalled my laptop with Win 7 Pro, instead of the included Home version, but I left the recovery partition. Why not? It isn't a problem or anything.
Re:Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Micro$oft (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like taking the car to the dealer for service. What could be more natural?
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doing something wrong? (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, it's doing a fair amount of math to transcode from CD format into MP3. You're also beholden to the underlying IO system and how much it can keep up with you in terms of buffering and the like. Also, Windows 7 has a crap load of annoying extra services running on it that need to be tuned down (like the indexer) that chew CPU time.
See, now you're just being an asshole. My wife has no interest in running Linux. I've got Linux, FreeBSD, XP, and Vista boxes, but she doesn't care. I'm certainly not going to start picking fights with her to tell her how much cooler another goddamn OS is. Maybe if you had a wife, you might understand that point.
It really is assholes like you that give the rest of OSS people a bad name. Yeah, we get it, linux is teh r0ck3rs. Blah, blah, blah.
Seriously, shut your pie hole and stop being such an arrogant, smarmy git. Not everybody gives a shit about Linux, and being a mindless drooling fanboi doesn't help anything. Windows and other OSes have their places as well. Cope.
God, sometimes I really hate listening to people who just mindlessly repeat the notion that Windows sucks and that all of the l337 people are using Linux. Go eat your crayons or something if you have nothing intelligent to contribute to the topic.
Re:HP Does this ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I learned that lesson with all PC makers. That is why if I get tasked with helping someone with a new PC, first thing I do is boot it from a Knoppix CD, plug in an external drive, and both tar and dd off the partitions. This gives me an image I know will work. Then I boot a TrueImage or MaxBlast CD and use that to image the partitions. The reason I do both is that for a novice user, TrueImage is easier to use, but I know the Linux dd image is able to put back exactly how something was laid out, sector by sector in case a PC maker decides to an attempt at DRM.
After that is done, I boot the machine, make the recovery DVDs (preferably onto dual layer DVD+R media), then make ISO images of those.
It sounds like a lot of work, but it ensures that the machine's software can be put exactly into the state it was when it was opened.
Of course, after I do all of this, I boot Knoppix again, dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda, zeroing out every nook and cranny of the drive, then install the OS of choice from scratch. One of the first and fundamental rules of system administration is never go with what is preinstalled, unless it is a custom OS load just for that box from the factory.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [microsoft.com] 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? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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:why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:1, Insightful)
This assumes the user has a working internet connection.
Re:why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows (Score:2, Insightful)
So, which of those links takes me to download a copy of Windows 7 in which I can just put the legal key that came under my laptop?
Re:One Of The Best Things About Being A Mac User (Score:5, Insightful)
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:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Well two things (Score:3, Insightful)
1) You can remove the partition easy enough.
Yes, you can. Too easily, in fact.
Sure, if you have Windows (or whatever your favorite OS is) install media then you probably don't care about this recovery partition. It's a good way to get a little extra space on the disk.
But if you don't have install media and you remove the partition? Now you're screwed.
I mean I reinstalled my laptop with Win 7 Pro, instead of the included Home version, but I left the recovery partition. Why not? It isn't a problem or anything.
The problem I have with a recovery partition isn't the space it takes up... It's the fact that it lives on my HDD.
If I get a nasty virus that starts eating my PC, it can get at that recovery partition. If my HDD fails, that recovery partition is gone. If I upgrade my HDD, I've got no media to use to install Windows on that new disk.
A recovery partition is entirely too vulnerable. I much prefer a physical disc.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Download one (Score:3, Insightful)
> - I can't make Flash work on Ubuntu, even though I've tried numerous times. It keeps saying something about, "Not enough permission."
Then you aren't really trying. You aren't actually sincerely trying to make it work. You're just trying to make it fail. You just want something to whine about. You're just a troll.
It doesn't get any easier than a vendor repository managed package.
Re:Ah the joys... (Score:3, Insightful)
You've already been told by the other guy but -
Compared to the latest incarnation of windows (7), linux is dreamlike for hardware compat. That scanner (and any accompanying printers) are more likely to work under linux, and without having to download a hundred megabytes of crap from a support site, if there's any support at all.
WLAN is a similar story and a friend has just had to go buy another card because he switched to win 7. And 3d is fine now, thanks.
Look, if you don't like linux for some reason then fine, nobody's forcing you to use it, but your arguments are out of date.
Re:Doing something wrong? (Score:1, Insightful)
"See, now you're just being an asshole. My wife has no interest in running Linux. I've got Linux, FreeBSD, XP, and Vista boxes, but she doesn't care. I'm certainly not going to start picking fights with her to tell her how much cooler another goddamn OS is. Maybe if you had a wife, you might understand that point.
It really is assholes like you that give the rest of OSS people a bad name. Yeah, we get it, linux is teh r0ck3rs. Blah, blah, blah."
hahahaha, well said. i wish i could be bothered logging into slashdot anymore and had any mod points because i'd push you up through the roof. there really are too many asshats in love with the feeling of superiority that using linux can, bizarrely, give them.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:3, Insightful)
But... even when the manufacturer TELLS people straight up to burn the backup DVD with the provided software, most people just don't do it. I don't see why they'd be more likely to burn an image that they'd have to download it.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet somehow my local chain store can sell me a DVD movie complete with plastic case and fancy jacket for under ten bucks... and profit from it.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, and somehow the dollar store sells re-pressings of older TV movies on DVD for $1 a piece, and profits from it.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:1, Insightful)
Dell is in the middle - definitely not great but not as crap as HP.
Re:It's down to the cost of one disk? (Score:3, Insightful)
AOL can spam the entire country with CDs through the snail mail. Companies like Dell have manufacturing processes down to an exact science. It's not that big of a cost. No really, it isn't.