I’ve never heard of such a rule that says vendors cannot ship Microsoft Windows CDs. In fact, I owned an HP laptop that had Windows XP on it, and it did in fact come with 4 restore CDs. If you look on Dell’s website, you have an option for Media or NO Media. Does HP have the same option?

Hi Daren,
All OEM’s have different policies and normally if you call them they will gladly send the original disk, usually at no cost or maybe a small s&h.

And I just looked at HP’s site. No such option is listed nor does it indicate if media is included.

Anyone just buy a new HP? Please let us know if you got a Windows CD or not.

I recently installed ubuntu on one of our computers because I’ve heard so many good things about it. I’m not yet comfortable using any flavor of unix/linux, but I heard ubuntu was super easy. And it is, right up to where I tried the music player. I tried to get it to play an mp3 file, but got a message that it didn’t have the proper decoder, and suggested that I install it. OK… what IS the proper encoder? WHERE do I find it??? And HOW do I install it when I do find it? Same thing with the movie player. And nothing I saw in the help files even hinted at how to do it. What the..?? Another example of the thing I’ve always found most annoying about the unix/linux crowd, and it’s that they always assume you already know what they know. “Music player won’t work? Just install the right codec and that’ll fix it.” “Can’t get on the internet? You probably just need to reset the DNS.” And always with a straight face, like everybody learned how to install codecs and reset a DNS in grade school. Sheesh.

I’m sure I could probably fix my ubuntu music and movie player problems in less than a day by careful googling, but why should I have to? How hard is it for them to include a few drivers and codecs, and tell you where to get others if you need them? If using ubuntu ever becomes important to me, I’ll take another run at it, otherwise, fuhgetaboudit.

Hi Ed,
Thanks for sharing your experience. If you do try any Linux flavor again, may I recommend Scot’s Newsletter Forum. The linux section is manned by some very knowledgeable people, who don’t make you feel like a idiot when asking a question.

http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com

Hey there…
this message replies to Ron Shenone…

I recently purchased HP Pavilion dv6015us notebookpc…I share the same feeling that Microsoft does enforece its policy of not letting distribution of o/s disks to notebook owners…lord and behold…that assumption is correct..I am another testifying witness…

My notebook does not come with any physical o/s media at all…if you want it, the owner has to create them at his/her expense by buring to 3 blank DVD+R disks. You would burn the recovery software to the disks from a special recovery partition found in the hdd drive of notebook…But HP only let folks burn the recovery cd’s once–that’s it.. If you try to burn more than one set of cd’s, you are out of luck..

In effect, I get only recovery cd not the o/s disk either. And I have to pay for my own blank DVD+R disks too!

I think this is all about limiting distribution of o/s cd’s to more than one machines…like it or not but the concept/practice works its teeth quite well into me..luckily, I still keep my legacy Windows Me o/s disks that does not have such limitations…

questions? feel free to email me…

bye now…
–Vinh–

Hi curious folks…

FAct:

HP does not distribute o/s disks to notebook owners. Owners are entitled to recovery disks only. And recovery disks must be burned by the owner at owner’s expense…

Vinh,owner of HP dvPavilion dv6000 notebook pc

questions?
email me

Vinh,
Thank you for the information you have provided. It is appreciated.

I got my son a Compaq (same as HP) V5205NR notebook back in September, did the build restore disks thing with my own CDs, registered his machine, waited until this month, went to the HP support site and I was able to order a restore DVD, had it shipped (they required the machine serial number) it showed up at my door two days later (A HP system restore disk). The support site did not have this option right after I purchased the machine, so maybe they wait awhile. The only way these computer manufacturers will know that their customers have a problem is to speak up LOUD, and let them know. If you don’t see it on their site as an option, call them and tell them you want them, don’t take any BS!

Ed said: “How hard is it for them to include a few drivers and codecs, and tell you where to get others if you need them?”

Hi Ed,

It would be very easy for them to include those things, but then they would have to pay a fee to the owners of those properties, and they would probably end up having to bill you.

On another note. My HP Pavilion dv4000 notebook came with restore CDs. Including one labeled Operating System CD Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2. I bought this system a little over a year ago.

I have had zero problems with it up until last night. It froze up and I powered it down. Something got corrupted on the hard drive and even trying reformat and reinstall XP would not work. Before I took it in to have it looked at, I decided to test the Hard Drive by trying to install Ubuntu on it. It installed fine and I’m now upgrading to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. So far so good.

I really want to dual boot, so once my test install is done, I will try to wipe the drive again and install XP.

I’m not trying to say that Ubuntu is magic or that it’s better than Windows XP. I’m just sharing my recent experience.

MonolithTMA,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Ubuntu is a good distro to try and will be even better now that Ubuntu and Linspire are working together. In April Click-N-Run technology will enable the user to install programs and drivers very easily.

Again, thanks for the comments. Ron

Thanks, Ron. I’ve been running the PPC version of Ubuntu for about two years. I’m not a hardcore user, I still boot into Mac OS X for most of what I do, but I find Ubuntu very functional and user friendly. Due to the lack of Flash and Java support for the PPC version, I’ve been curious about trying an Intel x86 version. My hard drive failure has now given me that chance. Talk about mixed blessings.

Your welcome. Good luck on the install. Ron

I am a pretty hard core Linux user, used it since redhat 6, but Ubuntu is the current king for ease of use, rarely do you have to muck around with drivers, and even if you do half the time they are and “apt-get install driver” away. But I do use windows(and Linux) for work, and set it up for clients. I recently had a client buy a Hp dv6000tx, no discs came with it. Issue came when we had to remove Vista and put on XP, there are very few drivers available for this model of laptop on hp’s own site. Missing where drivers for the NIC which I had to get from intel’s site, Drivers for the video card, wireless, chipset, modem all wouldn’t work with the various manufacturer downloaded drivers.
It was a nightmare, I eventually found a forum post that pointed me to a hp site, that was a different model, with the same hardware… So after several hours I had downgraded the laptop from a buggy non-working Vista (there was no working driver for some of the hardware) to a slightly less buggy windows XP.
Compare this several hours windows install to my new laptop I bought a few months ago, no OS, took about 25 minutes to get Ubuntu installed and all my data and personal tweaks installed.
If you ever have a problem with Ubuntu and you can’t find a solution within minutes on google, then look at www.ubuntuforums.org if you can’t find it there, then ask the question and someone will solve it.

I probably should have read the story before I commented. Who the hell installs Windows XP on a server.
Who the hell buys workstation hardware (bar the raid conroller) to do a servers job.
Who the hell doesn’t search the web for drivers when the manufacturers disk falls short?
This could all have been fixed (with xp on the “server”) by getting and installing the driver, then taking a ghost of the os to the raid array, then setting the bios to boot to the array.
But I guess Ubuntu was easier, and it is a way better server OS than WindowsXP, windows XP is a client os ffs.

Hello Morgan,
Wow, sounds like you had your hands full. It was good to hear that you finally got it sorted out and found the solution. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Hopefully it will help someone who reads your comments.
Thanks again, Ron
I just saw your second comment. I’m glad you read the story. Funny you should of mentioned Ubuntu, I’m testing Kubuntu beta now. Works perfectly. I’ll be trying the full version once it is released. I’m also looking forward to when Ubuntu/Kubuntu gets Click-n-Run from Linspire. This is going to be one heck of a distro. to beat. Well, back to work. I’m going to pound on Kubuntu to see if I can break it. I already know I won’t be able to. Oh, yes, this new version is lighting quick. Using a AMD 2800 solo with 1G Ram. The system rocks! Quick review here.
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/2007/04/17/linux-kubuntu-704-beta-nice-full-release-coming-on-april-19-2007