Sony Says Make Restore Discs Yourself

[Zoonie]

Tuan!

Sony hasn't been providing recovery discs since at least the release of VGN-FZ11, and that was 2005!

A quick google search and you'll see how many people have been asking about this since a few years back.
Thankfully, the community has come a long way, and me myself was among the first to make a bootable 'vanilla' Vista CD on the FZ31 instead of those dreaded, bloatware-filled recovery CDs.

Just wanted to say that this is not a new strategy.

 

[rpoinvil1]

This Sony discovery is old news. I build one that did not have a restore disk for a client back in October.
Sony will send you disks for free is requested. This is acceptable for a home user but not for any Business users.

 

[bardia]

5 years ago when I worked for CompUSA, this was fairly common practice. Common enough that we often pitched a $30 "getting started" service to clean up crapware and make the disks for the customer.

"Always has been" apparently wasn't your best choice of words. The Sony FW I purchased July 2008 did not come with restore disks either. Who cares? I quickly wiped it (didn't bother with disks), wiped the restore partition, and loaded a clean copy of Vista with the drivers on the website.

 

[mr_tuel]

"overcapitlist pigs"...never heard of a "capitlist"....

I work at a Best Buy, and NONE of the computers (except for Macs) come with any sort of restore disc or OS disc. If the customers are unwilling to make the discs themselves, then our geeksquad agents are more than happy to do it for them to the tune of about $60. It's very easy to do yourself, but a lot of my customers can't even figure out how to use System Restore. These are the same customers that also think that "Anti-Virus 2009" is a legitimate anti-virus program, and then wonder what happened to all their money.

 

[xeensd]

My Panasonic Toughbook comes with recovery discs (which have been used 7 times ) bought in 2008

 

[batkerson]

"After bruising through several notebooks. . ." Boy, you guys are tough. What did you do? Drop the notebooks and kick them around a bit? They probably just didn't want to sell you anything.

 

[Winly]

sony and others companies havent include restore cd's or dvd's for years. so you have to create them.

 

[bardia]

It's asinine that repair companies like Geek Squad even require the customers to buy a restore disk.

When my GF's computer came back to Geek Squad after a hard drive replacement, I went in to pick it up for her. They hadn't bothered to re-OS it. I told them no problem, I'm a tech, it has the OEM sticker and license on the bottom, just give me a backup windows disk and I'll restore it myself. No can do they said. So I said fine, do it yourself. Nope they said, it's illegal to not use the original disks.

I let them know that I do this 10 times a day, and as long as you're using the OEM license off the bottom, you're not pirating anything, but they refused.

It's so stupid that they require customers to pay $30 and wait a week to wait for disks. For my customers, I offer them the choice to not use the disks even if they have them, the benefit being that I can track down any driver, and they can avoid the crapware.

I decided that day that Geek Squad is manned by idiots.

 

[mehal88]

Actually, I remember buying a HP desktop about 5 or 6 years ago and no restore discs came with the purchase. When I started up the computer I was prompted by a HP application telling me to burn the discs myself.

 

[jerreece]

This is unfortunately nothing new. I purchased an Acer laptop in April, and it did not come with ANY discs what so ever. In fact, they pre-install software onto a hidden partition (thereby reducing your hard disk space) which contains their "Restore" program. Then when you boot up, their software prompts you to create a recovery disk (at the tune of like 6 DVDs) yourself.

Even if you go to the HP website and customize a system, you pay extra for a copy of the Windows CD if you want an actual physical copy to go with your license.

 

[erichlund]

If you build your recovery disks after removing all the crapware, then you only ever have to remove the crapware once. Still, considering the "average" user, it may be an "unfortunate" policy.

 

[cabose369]

in the 2 years I have been selling Sony laptops I have NEVER seen them come with Recovery/Restore Discs.

 

[Guest]

This is news?

This has been going on for YEARs. Dell went through a phase where if you wanted the discs you had to add $10 to your order.

 

[gorehound]

i did not realize that companies will not supply a restore disc.i have been building my own systems for 14 years now but this was an interesting read and it is BS.
most consumers might not quite understand how to "backup".i am not sure of this but i do know with the audio/video work i do it can be hard to explain to an average consumer what it is i am going to do for them.

and on sony i do believe i hate the company nowadays and i have been staying away from anything sony for years now.

 

[Twoboxer]

Frankly, I don't think recovery disks should be provided on any system that includes a burner. A burnable copy in a hidden partition is sufficient. CLEAR instructions to create the recovery disk as the first step after bootup are also necessary, along with a reminder on each boot-up until the recovery disks are actually made.

Whether the manufacturer provides blank DVDs or not is their option, but if not they must offer to sell the blanks at checkout with specific mention given to the backup requirement.

There is no perfect system. IMHO this approach is in the best interests of both the consumer and the manufacturer. Consumers have a responsibility, too. They cannot be protected from themselves. If a manufacturer decides to provide recovery disks, it should only be because they have found it in their best economic interests to do so.

Aparently, they have not.

 

[fo0b4er]

I work at Staples and sell PCs and laptops daily. I also do paid set-ups. Guess how many come with recovery discs... none! No brands include them! This includes hp, toshiba, dell, acer (incl. e-machines, gateway), asus, and sony!

 

[kittle]

"missing"
The only thing missing from my laptop was a working video driver for its switchable graphics. the one it came with was broken, but thats since been fixed.

 

[Guest]

If you're like me, you wipe out Windows and install Linux as the first order of business when buying a new computer.

 

[anhxeom]

I've bought tons of desktops and laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, for our facility for the past two years and none came with a restore disc. Dell does give you the option to purchase a disc for $10 when you configure the system.

 

[starryman]

Yeah yeah... we are all talking about a "restore" cd... but I'd prefer an actual copy of Windows so I can do a solid clean install.

 

[MetzMan007]

friends dell was order with on board graghics. went to up grade the video card with a pci-e card and guess what the pci-e slot was not even soldered to the board. all the soldering points were there but no slot. he was so mad the he phoned dell and asked why there was no slot. all they told him was that you did not order the computer with a video card in the slot so they give the board with out one. i can't remember the product number of computer he bought it in january and he was going to put a g-card in in like in march. all i know it was a intel quad core and had 4 gb of ram and windows vista home premium 64bit, with a x3100 i think and no pci express slot. and they would not let him return it either. the big piss off was is that they didn't even tell him when he order it. it was not on any order form when he built it online. he could have got like a 4850 or 9600gt or something like that, but he wanted a better one once he received it (a gtx 280). but all dell said was if you would have gottn the upgraded graghics they would have given him a board with the pci-e slot on the board. he also said they had the guts to hang up on him because thats something he shoud have known about when he bought it.

 

[arogot]

I bought a computer two years ago from HP, it was a laptop priced at $800 and I had to create my own restore CD. I didn't and when my hard drive corrupted, I had to pay $10 to get a new restore CD. My fault and my 10 bucks.

 

[Guest]

"Have you discovered any purchases you've made recently that omitted something you expected to be there?"

I would expect to have access to the manual for the motherboard.

It seems that Acer is failing to release the motherboard manual for any system containing the "TBGM-01 8EKS3H" motherboard. Even their Techs don't seem to have access to the manual.

The FX6800 series systems from Gateway (Acer Subsidiary)

There are also systems under the Acer brand and the Packard Bell (Acer Subsidiary) brand that use this same motherboard.

Not having the manual means not knowing what the various jumpers are for and not knowing what the pin outs for the motherboard are.

 

[bardia]

[citation][nom]MetzMan007[/nom]friends dell was order with on board graghics. went to up grade the video card with a pci-e card and guess what the pci-e slot was not even soldered to the board. all the soldering points were there but no slot. he was so mad the he phoned dell and asked why there was no slot. all they told him was that you did not order the computer with a video card in the slot so they give the board with out one. i can't remember the product number of computer he bought it in january and he was going to put a g-card in in like in march. all i know it was a intel quad core and had 4 gb of ram and windows vista home premium 64bit, with a x3100 i think and no pci express slot. and they would not let him return it either. the big piss off was is that they didn't even tell him when he order it. it was not on any order form when he built it online. he could have got like a 4850 or 9600gt or something like that, but he wanted a better one once he received it (a gtx 280). but all dell said was if you would have gottn the upgraded graghics they would have given him a board with the pci-e slot on the board. he also said they had the guts to hang up on him because thats something he shoud have known about when he bought it.[/citation]

Actually, in this case Dell was right. Your friend shouldn't complain if he assumed it came with a component that it did not and didn't bother to check ahead. Not all OEM boards include PCI-E slots.

Yelling at Dell for his dumb mistake is not cool.

 

[anamaniac]

My ATi Sapphire 4670 didn't come with any cables.
Luckily I already had all the necesary cables, but extras are nice when I'm short on suplies. Cables are insanely expensive to buy separately.