Don't buy a PC from HP

[Nostromo]

ust a little question - what are you supposed to do if the HD crashes ?

My father owns one. When you startup your PC for the first time, HP recommends you to back it up on CD or DVD.

[Jon Miller]

I actually think it is similiarly true with my Toshiba laptop. Well, I do have a DVD, but I don't think everything is on it.

JM

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by nostromo


My father owns one. When you startup your PC for the first time, HP recommends you to back it up on CD or DVD.

That might be, but unless I'm very mistaken, then you can't reboot/reinstall from a backup.

Maybe if HP recommends that you make a boot CD at startup too, it may make sense, but then, why not supply a CD with the OS that are installed ?

[Underseer]

HP computers have always been crap, at least in my experience. When HP merged with Compaq, I thought for sure we'd see a tear in the space-time continuum resulting from such an incredible concentration of computing badness.

They make decent printers, though.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by BlackCat

That might be, but unless I'm very mistaken, then you can't reboot/reinstall from a backup.

I believe you can reboot/reinstall from the CD/DVD. There's a program that takes you by the hand, IIRC. You're basically creating a restoration disk.

Maybe if HP recommends that you make a boot CD at startup too, it may make sense, but then, why not supply a CD with the OS that are installed ?

To cut costs.

[Maquiladora]

I "fixed" HP PC's for 6 months for an insurance company, i cant count how many times i found blown caps on the MB and/or dead PSU.

We had more than 10 sets (5+ CD's each) we created (ghosted and created from customers partitions) for each HP model for when the backup partition wasnt recoverable. Way to go HP and create different CD's for EVERY model.

You can imagine the customers reaction when i told them we had to charge to remaster the drive if they didnt create backup CD's, because the insurance was "hardware only".

Dell on the other hand or building your own

[Harry Tuttle]

My father had an HP once. He got a full package: Tower, Monitor, Keyboard. One day, his keyboard broke. It was under warranty so he called up HP and asked for a new one. They said they would send one out right away. Two weeks later my father receives a new Tower! A whole new CPU! Dad called them up to report their mistake. They said to keep the CPU. Morans I tells yuh.

[Maquiladora]

did he get the KB though?

[Harry Tuttle]

Yes, on the second try they finally sent the keyboard. Thankfully this mistake helped to provide me with a nice, new computer for college.

[Maquiladora]

Never heard of anything that bad, but i never dealt with HP directly. Its amazing if thats standard practice (to let you keep it) on an incorrect dispatch.

[Kuciwalker]

Not really. It's not worth the effort it would take to get it back.

[Harry Tuttle]

Exactly. The computer was not top of the line and probably was not worth having a tech go over it to make sure it was still up to factory spec.

[Maquiladora]

Up to HP factory spec, i dunno, wouldnt take long.

[The Mad Monk]

Cali, just have your lawyer call them.