Today was my nieces 13th birthday. Because she is growing up and almost in high school my dad/her grandpa, bought her a compaq laptop. Now, being the nice geek uncle I am, I told her I would help set it up for her. And by setup, I mean:
- Install FireFox 3
- Delete all Internet Explorer shortcuts
- Install AVG
- Uninstall Norton Antivirus 60day trial version
- Stop all programs from launching when Windows starts up
- Install Windows Updates
- Install Adaware
- Run Adware
- Make recovery discs
Wait, wtf? Make recovery discs? Yes. I had to make recovery discs because the box didn’t come with one. Instead it came with this paper:
My first thought after reading this was, “Since when did this type of thing started happening?” Then I thought, “This isn’t a good feature at all. What if the hard drive completely dies?” You wouldn’t be able to do a full recovery when you put in a new hard drive. Or would you? So, just to make sure, I created those recovery discs. What surprised me was that it took 2 DVDs and 2 hours to create them.
It was no big deal to me. I just kept playing Street Fighter 4 on Xbox Live while the recovery discs were created. But all these procedures to get a PC laptop running out of the box and smoothly completely made me hate Windows even more and OS X less.
Out of the box, OS X takes less than 30 minutes to setup. That’s even with the software updates.
Related Posts :
A peek inside a Blu-Ray factoryEver wondered how those mighty fine BDs are made? Yeah, so have I. Now thanks to News Corp Austr ...
DVD Drive Registry FixRecently I have noticed that many HP (and other manufacturer) laptops have been having an issue ...
Got a massive Blu-Ray collection? Sony's got you coveredWe're in a recession, but that doesn't mean someone out there doesn't have money to burn, a desi ...
A new floppy for the internet generation[caption id="attachment_2672" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="All the benefits without ...
Microsoft Anti-Virus app on the wayMicrosoft has been prepping an anti-virus app for Windows for a while now. The project first s ...
Tags: compaq, hardware, laptop, mac, pc, software, Tech, technology, Windows
Uninstall Adaware, Uninstall AVG, Install Comodo Internet Security
ok
Wut, why would you even make recovery disks. they are useless, just grab a copy of standard vista and use the key on the bottom of the laptop, that saves you the time of uninstalling the crap that comes in the recovery disks plus gives you a fresh clean version of windows
@sasha, drivers man, drivers.
You can also choose what progz are on your recovery disc.
@Fillmatic: Drivers are useful, for sure, but those available online from the manufacturer site are almost always later versions. About the only critical driver to keep around is the NIC (network card) driver which–once installed–gives you access to the updated installers available online. Regardless, once a set is downloaded, save it to a USB flash drive–which is ridiculously cheap these days.
Another argument that I’ve heard is that (some) of the preinstalled software is actually useful–like the CD/DVD burning software that came bundled with the PC, but with a suitably knowledgeable tech at hand, it’s possible to recover this software as well. Case in point, I have a Compaq Presario C500 series laptop next to me that has had its recovery partition removed–thus freeing up space–and with a Vista license and the copy of the partition, I’m able to restore what I want, and nothing else.
@Sasha: Following the above, Microsoft’s licensing agreements differ on what you can actually do with the installation CD’s. OEM-branded installation media MUST come with OEM parts; if you remove the part that qualifies you for the OEM media, or you use an OEM key with the wrong media (even if it lets you), your license is invalid. To put this another way, if you use external, standalone media, and the OEM key on the bottom of the laptop instead of the key that came with the media, you’ve got a licensing model problem. Other than OEM and standalone, other license structures include volume and upgrade licenses–yes, it’s annoying, but it’s better than finding that WGA disables your laptop one day because you “got away with it” for a few months. That said, Microsoft’s licensing is clearly available from their main website.
The one thing that irks me about “create your own discs” is that people who think they’re doing a good thing and “clean up” their “installed programs” list, then accidentally or intentionally remove their recovery disc creator are out of luck. No manufacturer I’ve spoken to will tell you have to recover the system without BUYING the discs now–even though you can CLEARLY SEE the recovery partition is still there.
C’est la vie. Cheers folks.