I am active in the Usenet groups. Have been for more years off and on than I care to count. One of the current crop of complaints that I have seen, and am actually in a thread about, deals with the people that purchased OEM systems complaining that Microsoft should do this, they need to be strung from the yardarm, ad nauseam. One thread in particular that I am involved in deals with a person that did something to his machine and wants to do a repair to Vista. He happens to have an Acer just like I do, and neglected to check the system out fully, and did not notice that Acer includes this nifty little app called "Empowering Technology", that allows you to make restore disks, back up applications and such, and lets you do back ups of your system at regular intervals. Here are some things to do/be aware of when purchasing an OEM system…

• Look at the price of the OEM system and retail versions of the software. There is a reason you are paying less. This is why you do not get a copy of the Windows media with your purchase.
• Research you purchase thoroughly before buying. If you feel you need the medium, go with a manufacturer that provides it. If not, you will have to buy it.
• If it doesn’t, it will normally show you how to make restore disks that take it back to the factory configuration. Use that.
• Take the time to check your system out completely after the purchase. Will save you headaches down the road.
• Some, like Acer, provide additional software to do back ups at regular intervals, or manually. Use it.
• Back up, back up, back up!!!

The price of DVD media is to the point that making back ups of your system is now feasible. I caught a sale a Home Depot last week. Spindles of 50 DVD+R were $9.99. I snapped up 5 just to have them. The price of hard drives are low enough now that this is also a  viable option. The software that shipped with my Acer lets me choose whether I want to back up to one of my partitions, or to removable media. All the newer software should give you that option. In short the old saying of Caveat Emptor applies here, know what you are buying before you buy it. Deal with whatever perceived shortcomings you think it has. If you just use a little common sense you’ll see things will run a lot smoother.

Oh, and I hope that everyone had a better Christmas than I did. Have spent the past few days nursing a bad abscess, in tremendous pain, and was miserable yesterday. Not to mention have barely been able to eat, which is bad since I am diabetic. Hopefully my sweet lady will forgive my being so ill-tempered, and snappish.