Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 29, 2002 08:41 AM
It was MS that instigated this practice, dude. The alleged cut in tech-support time (through not walking you through OS installs) is a front; by not supplying you with a real OS install dis[k/c/q], they're supposedly cutting down on 'casual piracy' (i.e. kids won't run off a copy of XP/whatever for their schoolfriends if they know it'll zap the entire hard disk. This hasn't stopped any number of illegal copies of WinXP being passed around, so has been an all-but-total failure). Try asking your OEM for an *real* install disk and you'll be told they can't give you one: this is because their OEM deal with MS *explicitly prohibits them doing so*. If the OS goes boom after a couple of months and you have to use this restore disk, what happens to all the crap you've created/downloaded since you bought the machine ? That's right, it gets overwritten, and do you know *any* non-technical users who make backups ? Admittedly this isn't made clear in the article, but the root cause of this problem is MS's business tactics. Any solution would require either a legal slapping-down (now highly unlikely) or the combined resistance of the larger PC builders (just as unlikely given any manager's total inability to actually see the 'bigger picture' the waffle on about).
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Re:More Compaq than XP
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 29, 2002 08:41 AMIf the OS goes boom after a couple of months and you have to use this restore disk, what happens to all the crap you've created/downloaded since you bought the machine ? That's right, it gets overwritten, and do you know *any* non-technical users who make backups ?
Admittedly this isn't made clear in the article, but the root cause of this problem is MS's business tactics. Any solution would require either a legal slapping-down (now highly unlikely) or the combined resistance of the larger PC builders (just as unlikely given any manager's total inability to actually see the 'bigger picture' the waffle on about).
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