Sometime ago I posted a thread on here about the problems I had with a certain HP computer. The OS crashed on it and I tried to restore from the hard drive to no avail. No recovery CDs came with the system and no support option was available from the operating system - looked rather odd to me that certain items were missing from the control panel as if HP loaded a different version of XP than the normal home edition had.
Well I just got a letter today stating that there is a class action lawsuit against HP for unfair and deceptive trade practices for a) storing recovery information on the hard drive thereby reducing the overall storage space (w/o the consumer's knowledge), b) for not providing any recovery CDs with the computer (BTW to get one you had to pay for it) and c) for removing the ValueAdd and Support options from the version of Windows XP that they mass installed on their systems. It also says that HP does not admit any wrongdoing, of course, and that ---- get this......hard disk recovery is more reliable than CD recovery. What a bunch of trash. Everyone and anyone with half a brain knows that hard drive data can get corrupted at any time - in any sector - including the recovery sectors. This shows me that HP is either a bunch of morons when it comes to computers, or they are simply unable to face the facts that they deceived and duped consumers into buying their illegit PCs.
It's about time these guys get their just due. Gateway, Compaq, and others also have also used this practice both on Notebooks and Desktop PCs. I sincerely hope this practice stops because everyone in the industry, except for them, knows how wrong and how deceptive it is and that the consumer never really 'owns' a copy of Windows XP. How you can sell a PC with Windows XP, yet not provide the consumer with Windows XP on a CD is beyond me. They paid for the license, yet they don't even own a single copy of the OS. Not to mention the driver issues that come with these PCs. The drivers are proprietary to the PC and therefore the individual manufacturers of the hardware will NOT support those installed in these systems. They will tell you to go back to the manufacturer of the PC for support, at which time when you do this you will realized that you don't have the drivers, you can't download them, and you must pay to get a CD with the drivers on it. So in short, you cannot reformat or reinstall Windows XP - if it gets hosed, and we all know it will eventually, and if the recovery fails (which 9 times out of 10 it does), then you are screwed. You must purchase a recovery CD, which still does not have the true Windows XP Home Edition on it - it is simply a disk image of how the drive looked when you got it. What a mess.
This crap needs to be stopped. Selling consumers an image of Windows XP and driver files ought to be illegal.