I agree with you as far as bricks and mortar John. And I don't know the
numbers of pcs sold in stores of all kinds vs. those sold on line or on the
phone from the 300 or so OEM partners. Obviously stores don't set that
policy or have any impact on it, but MSFT and OEMs do. I should have been
clearer. I was targeting purchases by phone or online principally from the
300 OEM named partners--the Dells, the Sony's, HPs, Acer, etc. It has
just been a huge source of frustration to me that MSFT has these teams to
make tools like Win RE that can bail people out in a jam--and startup repair
can do a considerable amount to fix the OS even when you can boot, when it
works. I hate to see them not reach people.
Note that Dell has promised to make an exception now with Vista--according
to one of their two new blogs--and MSFT should back off their active,
direct pressure and contract negotiations to insure that what Dell is doing
does not happen with the other named OEMs:
Bloatware, Operating System Discs and Dell Software Support
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2006/10/17/3132.aspx
"Other users have expressed concern about not having the operating system
reinstallation CD when they need it. When ordering a new machine, all
consumers and corporate customers can opt for the Windows CD for around $10.
Additionally, since July 2004, most new PCs (Dell gaming systems all ship
with the OS CD)come pre-loaded with a disk partition that contains PC
Restore, an applcation that allows users to reinstall system software
quickly. See these instructions for how to use PC Restore to reinstall the
operating system and Dell factory-installed applications in about 10
minutes.
Update: Thanks to Direct2Dell reader Steven and a couple of Dell employees
for pointing out a mistake I made in my original post. When I wrote this,
the OS media was listed as an option in the configurator for $0. I mis-read
the number, and for that mistake, I apologize. Also, though this been in
the works for some time before now, it's now official. For U.S. consumer
and small business customers, all systems will now ship with an operating
system disc. This change will take effect in Europe by later next month. In
Asia, things are unchanged—we've always shipped OS discs with systems
there."
My push for MSFT and OEMs to supply an OS DVD came out of my experience
during XP's reign from Beta until Vista released, when F8 couldn't save the
OS, and I had to resort to a repair install to help people fix it when they
had an XP CD. For me, a repair install was very easy and quick (about 32
minutes) and failures were extremely rare ( a few times you had to repeat
2-3 times but those were very rare.)
I don't know what a lab environment testing different problems that it
could be deployed to fix would produce statistically as to the success of
Win RE--Startup Repair and its other lesser known tools like
There also may be some partitions that are more competent than others, but
my experience with "recovery disc" and recovery partitions was that they
nearly always failed. If a particular maker puts the whole OS code in a
hidden partition, I think it must be rare, but how much more could it cost
to put it on a DVD?
I just have never understood why MSFT and the OEM (large named partners)
couldn't get together to provided a CD/now DVD for the buyer. Many system
builders do. This question actually came up when MSFT had their annual
System Builder meeting here, and the answer from the MSFT representative was
pathetic. A system builder asked why they had to supply the OS but the big
guys (the named partners didn't) and the answer was that if they sold 50,000
computers they would be exempt.
At no time did the answer consider that they leave a substantial part of
their customers out in the cold without the major repair tools for the OS
that are left on the CD (XP) /DVD (Vista).
MSFT could put Win RE's features on line as a free download if they wanted
to. I think they should and I can sure get that idea to them, but I'm
skeptical they'll do it because it's all about their perception they want to
increase the sale of their retail OS's.
CH
..
