Not A Graceful Recovery For HP Customers 434
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.
this would tick me off (Score:2, Insightful)
Won't affect corporate customers much (Score:4, Insightful)
Who's to say Linux would be any different? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Won't affect corporate customers much (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't have a problem with this IF.... (Score:2, Insightful)
BYOB (buld your own box).
You got the software... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?"
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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:Step 1: Buy a Mac. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who's to say Linux would be any different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:price per megabyte, my friend (Score:3, Insightful)
Something about the ability to install the OS you paid for on a new machine after junking your current one without paying them?
Re:You got the software... (Score:3, Insightful)
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:I'm sick of HP's crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
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?