Let me put it to some of you this way:
Computers in this day and age don't come with restore discs. They haven't for years, and I've worked at two major retail electronics stores. Instead they will give every hard drive a restore partition for the users to create the discs themselfs. The reasoning is not DVD costs, is labor costs. A Geek Squad recovery disc creation is sold at $39.99 and takes anywhere from 3-5 hours depending on the PC. It is also not a simple matter of shoving a disc in the drawer and going outside to sunbathe. You have to follow a few prompts much like you do during a Windows installation. You basically have to babysit it. Now while the company who makes the laptops will obviously do it much cheaper (for an example lets just say its $20 for Sony to do it), imagine how much money would be saved by keeping $20 for every single laptop produced at the factory. Even if it was just one model of laptop, manufacture for only a month. That's huge savings. Is it at the users inconvenience? Absolutely. Should they give you the discs? Yes. Will they? No. More and more companies are jumping off the "free accessories" bandwagon every year. Just last year Toshiba gave a pair of restore DVD's in every box. They stopped doing that as of January 2009. The only two brands sold retail that give you discs are now Dell and Asus, that's it.
As far as people who use computers not being required to be competent, that's not really a lot to ask of companies. I see one of the latest commenters mentioned that just because you have a car doesn't mean you need to know how to change a timing belt. That's absolutely correct, because you have mechanics to do it for you. The mechanic profession has lasted for hundreds of years, and various car repair chains have lasted for decades. With computer hardware, that isn't so. Only people lucky enough to have a Geek Squad or EasyTech desk in their area have the luxury of having other people do your work for you. And you know what? As much as I hate to glorify retail sales: Customers spit in your face at the mere idea of charing them labor to do their work for them, even if it's guarenteed, even if we're sure they're stupid and aren't adept enough to do it themselfs, etc.
Believe it or not, a lot of retail sales people (yes even supervisors and managers) are humans too, not sharks who smell blood in the water. If I ever contacted a customer who obviously could install anti-virus himself, I could probably talk him into letting the store techs do it for him for $29.99. I didn't. Instead I gave the customer a good feeling about coming to me to buy all of his electronics by telling him he can save money by following the setup wizard, and instead having him and his friends use us for more complex tasks. This helps to strengthen customer relationships and give them the feeling that we actually care if they like us when they shop with us. In a good retail store, the solution that's best for the customer is NOT always the one that makes the company money. But by the same token, anybody with business sense knows that a good experience leads to trust and willingness to buy more fine products from the same fine people.
Coming back the technical expertise though, I've seen a lot of stupid things. I've seen people who vacuum their computers, people who block heat vents with fabric, people who have actual bug nests inside their desktops, clueless kids who download porn viruses, games with trojans and people who simply just don't take our advice because of stupid column writers in magazines like Consumer Reports, and end up worse off because of it. And guess who they come back to blame? The companies who make the merchandice and the people who sell it.
Should you have to know every aspect of internals like pin configurations, jumper settings and bios readings? No. But should you have a basic understanding of the "rules of the road"? I think so. It takes a license to drive doesn't it? Why arent there manditory courses for you to take before being able to use a computer on the largest information superhighway of all? The internet. That's one hell of a reference, I know. But I think it makes perfect sense. There are "rules" that need to be taught and abided by.
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