Posted on 01/10/2002 6:46:47 AM PST by colette_g
When they told her to send it back, they said they would ship her a prepaid shipping box. It took three weeks for the box to arrive; Lord only knows how long it will take for them to return the tower.
Under pressure from angry customers, HP began sending out CDs in late December.
THE point is, no government force or new laws were necessary to get HP to do what was right by it's own customers...
No new laws making manufacturers send out recovery disks were necessary...
No new antitrust legislation was called for...
The free market did it's job. Through customer complaints HP changed it's policy to the betterment of the individual customer...
It is essential that the American sheeple somehow learn that the free market will always correct problems faster, better and cheaper than any government agency could ever dream of...
That is just the tip of the iceberg...
Most sellers of new PC will not provide an operating system CD with the system!
It can never be reinstalled or repaired should the system freeze (and it will, it's just a matter of when).
In spite of my advice not ever to go near "XP" anything, a few of my firends have replaced their computers and failed to request other OS to be installed (non-XP Windows 2000 comes to mind) and are now tearing their hair out:
PC cams that previously worked fine are no longer usable.
Digital camera software used for a year or two previously will no longer install and run on the new computer.
Scanners, will no longer work. HP is famous for ending support for older models printers, scanners and CD writers after a very short time forcing customers to buy updated drivers from third party providers, or from HP itself.
Unless Microsoft is in a position to claim that their XP Operating system is perfect and bulletproof, there are many many other reasons for the OS to be corrupted or otherwise unusable other than replacing a hard drive.
Try replacing the motherboard...
Install an unintegrated graphics card...
A new modem...
After these many months of discussion, anyone who buys or instals any XP is out of his mind.
Last I heard 50% of XP upgrades have failed.
If this represents only 1% of users, it's still an awfully large number.
Huh? Say wha-a-a-at?
If you don't have bootable recovery media you're an idiot. Period.
Pssst.
A recovery disk may not be enough.
You bought and paid for an operating system and should be able to do a clean re-install.
Even if you have to call Big Brother Microsoft (which you would have to do) and ask "pretty please may I make my computer useful again?"
A "recovery" disk would not make a re-install possible.
kAcknor Sez:
HP: The PackardBell of the 21st Century! Everybody seemed to have to buy just one. After that, you knew better.
"tIqIpqu' 'ej nom tIqIp" (Hit them hard and hit them fast.)
Yeah... ten or twenty years ago.
You pay for an OS, but you don't get to keep it. Let them try this on their corporate customers and watch their stock tank overnight.
There are a couple of parts to the problem. It used to be you'd get a CD with the full OS on it, in the case you needed to add files or install a new hard drive. Microsoft felt that this led to piracy, so they no longer allow those OS CDs to be shipped with computers. The manufacturer has the choice of creating a Recovery CD (branded to the computer) or a Recovery Image (hidden on the hard drive), but both of those solutions have some problems.
Check out these links:
Readers decry Microsoft policy of withholding operating system CD
Just before the release of Win XP, a friend in the business recommended the purchase of Win 2000 as a safe - relatively bug free - alternative to XP. It turned out to be excellent advice. I've researched all of the benchmark evaluations of Win XP and Win 2K. I've concluded that Win XP is nothing more than an updated service pack build of Win 2000 with a colorful new GUI shell, a few new multi-media apps, and a repulsively intrusive authentication routine that will disable your system if you make significant hardware upgrades.
Nobody, not even the known Microsoft shill munchkins on FR, have assailed me on this conclusion.
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