neither my notebook or my PC came with one.

Worked at best buy. Sony and all other oem's haven't included recovery discs with their computers for YEARS. Way before the economy started to fall apart. The only laptop manufacturers I know of that include recovery discs right now are Dell and IBM Lenovo. All other manufacturers have a program that starts on first boot telling you to insert 2 blank dvd's and it will burn the recovery image onto them.

Well MS should be loving this policy.
"But I had Windows on there already. Why do I have to buy it again?"

So what percentage of users do you think do this without being prompted?

This is old news; I bought a Sony Vaio for my girlfriend 2.5 years ago and this was the approach. I don't see an issue really. If you aren't bright enough to create the restore disk, your probably the person who would toss these out, after opening you computer anyway.

What about a portion of the HDD dedicated to recovery as Dell and other manufacturers do. Now obviously this doesn't solve mechanical HDD failures, but its a start.

Thoughts?

Read the find print, the recovery dics must be made on bluray media.

A very low percentage actually do it. I do warranty repairs all the time, and what usually happens is they have to purchase the discs from the manufacturer after they have the machine.

I worked over at Circuit City for 8 months up till they shut down. As far as I know, only Toshiba and Lenovo carry Restore Disks. Because I did work on people's computers through Firedog, and thats the only time I've seen them. HP, Compaq, Sony, Acer, and my girlfriends Dell (from Best Buy) did/does not come with Restore Disks.

Actually this is not necessarily a reflection on the current economic climate. Sony has not been offering recovery discs for 1-1.5 years now!

I do not agree. Discs are cheap, how many consumers won't take the effort or will mess it up somehow or have a write error in the dics. The company should make the discs.

I worked at Best Buy a couple years ago and at that time I only remember Toshiba models having recovery discs included. The rest was burn it yourself or have GeekSquad do it for you (for a fee of course). All in all a pretty lousy way to save a few cents at the most. Besides which, all the companies not providing discs where waiting for the user to have a crash or HD failure and then hit them up for money to provide discs (anywhere from $40 to $150 bucks for a recovery set depending on the manufacturer). Pretty lousy way of treating a customer if you ask me.

HP has a built-in recovery partition on the hdd. So that if your PC needs to be restored, you just choose the recovery option upon booting and, boom, fresh from the factory OS.

Amongst HP, Acer, Gateway, EMachines, Toshiba, Dell, Compaq, and Sony - as of right now, only Dell provides full sets of recovery discs with their consumer level PCs. Up until roughly 6 months ago, most Toshibas came with discs and about a year ago Gateway/EMachines had the OS disc but not drivers/apps. All other discs had to be created by the user for the last 4 years or so.
Seems like a profitable scam to me - especially on laptops. In my profession, at a large electronics chain, wearing a tie - it seems like the average laptop hard drive only lasts 2 years with some dying much sooner and some dying later. At that point 99% of users don't have discs so they have to call the manufacturer, usually dishing out another $30 (give or take) and waiting a week or two.

It's not a way to save money, it's a way to make money.

The money maker for Sony isn't not making the discs to put in the box at POS, it is in charging $50 for them when the client needs them after a HD failure. Maybe every person won't lose a drive, but that is the most common component failure, especially in a laptop. So say 3% of Sony laptops loses a HD, (thousands of computers) multiplied by $50 minus cost of disc... pretty big chunk of change that nobody is going to notice them making until it is too late....

In my house, we have bought 3 notebooks in the last 3 years and not a single one came with a restore disk. Just a hidden hard drive partition, and *sometimes* a blank DVD. Its REALLY annoying and cheap.

Really old news. Other factors that led to this:
- making a master disk for each new laptop series is expensive, even for sony and other OEMs. There are LOTS of different models out there, and each would require a different master disk to make pressed copies from.
- by sending the ISOs instead of the pressed DVDs, they can update the install/image whenever they want, whenever they find a bug or want to update the shipped drivers.

These two are probably the main reasoning behind this move from the major OEMs.

P.s its not just sony, HP, Toshiba and Gateway do this, and I'm sure many others do as well.

I don't think that it is so much about money. A few years ago (OK, maybe more than just a few), our company had terrible problems providing internet support for Packard Bell, Compaq and a number of other brands. The problem was that software updates like Win95-B had been slipstreamed into production and the pressed discs were not the same as the installed version.

Another issue is the newer flavors of MS activation that limits the number of installs. I'm sure that this is a tremendous headache for all of the vendors to support. So really, the lack of CD images is not surprising..... But you would think they could throw in a few cool colored blanks to make your reinstall set with.

I don't think that it is so much about money. A few years ago (OK, maybe more than just a few), our company had terrible problems providing internet support for Packard Bell, Compaq and a number of other brands. The problem was that software updates like Win95-B had been slipstreamed into production and the pressed discs were not the same as the installed version.

Another issue is the newer flavors of MS activation that limits the number of installs. I'm sure that this is a tremendous headache for all of the vendors to support. So really, the lack of CD images is not surprising..... But you would think they could throw in a few cool colored blanks to make your reinstall set with.

Acer, Gateway, some Dell's, eMachines, just to name a few, this has been going on for years, what a stupid story....

hp does this.. and i think the system is great because you can actually setup everything the way you want it.. run the restore software that takes a snapshot of your system and gives you that plus the seperate OS and software restore discs all in one easy to access area. it pops out iso images too so you can make as many copies as you want whenever you want. i think this type of system is great for techs as we are able to generate restore discs at any time since users/owers often loose or destroy them in one way or the other...

And yet they still lose money on every PS3 they sell.

HP charges anywhere from $9 to $19 for a set of recovery DVD's with their notebooks. But they also include a recovery partition on the hard drive so you can get back to the factory settings, and let you create your own set of recovery discs.

You two guys in the article need to quit whining and take a reality check. Seriously, if you cannot create your own set of factory recovery discs, why the hell are you using a computer in the first place? If the recovery software doesn't work (highly unlikely) you have the option to send the unit back or request a set of discs be sent to you. Even then, Vista Ultimate comes with a full-system-backup utility. Are not not aware of the need to keep regular backups either? Oh, let me guess, you get a kick out of reinstalling all your apps and configuring your settings when your hard drive quits or you manage to totally screw up the OS.

Dextermat says:

Don't buy sony, cause their overcapitlist pigs that likes to be a pain in the ass with their lawsuits, DRM, rootkits.

Yes Sony was a great company in the 80-90, but since, it's just another crappy company like HP, Gateway, Dell. Sell high prices with little or no quality in the making..

Their channel is just as bad as Dell...

Anyway you've been warned!!

That's really intelligent analysis, exar333. Sounds like you have a bright future with the Geek Squad.

When I bought my PC four years ago, it didn't come with recovery disks. To make matters worse, the hard drive on my computer failed before I had a chance to make any. Ooops.

After sending the computer company a number of angry e-mails, they replaced the hard drive (with no software installed) *and* sent me some factory-made recovery disks.

So, yeah, relying on the customer to make his own recovery disks is a pretty stupid idea in my opinion. In my case, I was left with a brand new, but completely useless, computer because I no longer had access to the OS. With recovery disks, I would at least have had the option of buying another hard drive while I waited for the computer company to act.

Tuan!

Sony hasn't been providing recovery discs since at least the release of VGN-FZ11, and that was 2005!

A quick google search and you'll see how many people have been asking about this since a few years back.
Thankfully, the community has come a long way, and me myself was among the first to make a bootable 'vanilla' Vista CD on the FZ31 instead of those dreaded, bloatware-filled recovery CDs.

Just wanted to say that this is not a new strategy.

This Sony discovery is old news. I build one that did not have a restore disk for a client back in October.
Sony will send you disks for free is requested. This is acceptable for a home user but not for any Business users.

5 years ago when I worked for CompUSA, this was fairly common practice. Common enough that we often pitched a $30 "getting started" service to clean up crapware and make the disks for the customer.

"Always has been" apparently wasn't your best choice of words. The Sony FW I purchased July 2008 did not come with restore disks either. Who cares? I quickly wiped it (didn't bother with disks), wiped the restore partition, and loaded a clean copy of Vista with the drivers on the website.

"overcapitlist pigs"...never heard of a "capitlist"....

I work at a Best Buy, and NONE of the computers (except for Macs) come with any sort of restore disc or OS disc. If the customers are unwilling to make the discs themselves, then our geeksquad agents are more than happy to do it for them to the tune of about $60. It's very easy to do yourself, but a lot of my customers can't even figure out how to use System Restore. These are the same customers that also think that "Anti-Virus 2009" is a legitimate anti-virus program, and then wonder what happened to all their money.

My Panasonic Toughbook comes with recovery discs (which have been used 7 times ) bought in 2008

"After bruising through several notebooks. . ." Boy, you guys are tough. What did you do? Drop the notebooks and kick them around a bit? They probably just didn't want to sell you anything.

sony and others companies havent include restore cd's or dvd's for years. so you have to create them.