Time/Tiny dubious business practices?

In ,
Frank le Spikkin typed:
"Mike Redrobe" wrote in news:d63Vc.3051$%
:

Frank le Spikkin wrote:

2) Recovery disks for a Tiny notebook PC are not supplied as
standard unless you buy an extended warranty package. You are
invited to call their Sales line if you want just the CDs - price
is £29.95 - equivalent to a 3% price increase.

Workround: use a disk imaging package such as Norton Ghost to
create your own.

Use any CDR copy of XP. It's the reg code that makes you
legal, not the media.

Tiny et al normally put the code on a sticker on the pc itself.

Good point Mike. That will work fine for a repair reinstall of XP,
but for a wipe-and-reload, it omits any add-on apps that came
bundled, e.g. CD burner, DVD player, MS Works.

The repair process that you can invoke from the orginal (or copy) media will
not overwrite any apps or personal data, just fix winXP. However, because
the clients are not supplied with any form of media, or in the worst case
get the 'recovery' package the facility is lost.

As long as Tiny/Time fix the serial (as their OEM agremment states they
must) to the case, and customers are smart enough to use yellow pages, then
us service guys are in business. Mind you I make a point of always
supplying a copy of WinXP when I see an offical sticker on case, if the
client does not have one.

Jason Russell
Dotcom Computers Ltd

In news Paul Hopwood typed:
Parish wrote:

Sadly, for us the end user, they are perfectly legit due to the
terms of M$'s EULA.

IMNSHO M$ are screwing us. Their licence should make it mandatory to
supply the media, customized OEM if the reseller so desires, but a
physical CD nonetheless - and _not_ one of those bloody "recovery"
CDs that is effectively a disk image and does an unconditional
format of the HD, but one that allows you to do an in-place upgrade.

M$ go on about the end user ripping _them_ off, i.e. pirating, but,
again IMNSHO, they are ripping us off, or more accurately, allowing
their agents to rip us off.

Nonsense... it's a market economy.

If you want to buy a PC with a full copy of Windows you're quite
entitled to spend your money with a vendor who does so. Someone else
who'd sooner save a few quid and buy some a crap PC from a crap vendor
with crap support and crap all in the way of media is quite entitled
to do so; the vendor is, and should imho, be quite entitled to sell it
as long as people want to buy it.

Were Microsoft to try to enforce such a policy there would be as much
complaint about unjust it was, how they're forcing people to spent
more money, restrictive practices etc etc. They really can't win
whatever they do simply because they're Microsoft.

Going back to your car analogy, when you buy a new vehicle you don't
expect the dealer to provide you with a toolkit so you can make your
own repairs. If you happen to be able to undertake your own repairs
you'd either have or buy the tools to do so. While some of us might
regard media to be essential most punters probably expect to return
the PC to a repair agent anyway if it got to that.

iv Paul iv

I have never seen for sale via the channel just the OEM license without
media from a Microsoft approved distie.

I suspect that given the minimal cost of cd reproduction, it is not worth MS
bothering with this.

From a manufacturing point of view, it maybe worth producing your own CD
with Windows forming part along with the drivers/additional products sold at
POS.

Still a bugger for the end users.

Jason

"Dotcom Computers" wrote:

IMNSHO M$ are screwing us. Their licence should make it mandatory to
supply the media, customized OEM if the reseller so desires, but a
physical CD nonetheless - and _not_ one of those bloody "recovery"
CDs that is effectively a disk image and does an unconditional
format of the HD, but one that allows you to do an in-place upgrade.

I have never seen for sale via the channel just the OEM license without
media from a Microsoft approved distie.

All the larger manufacturers, or users for that matter, negotiate
volume licensing terms with Microsoft which almost always exclude
media. The license simply states the distributions terms and
sometimes (but not always) the volume involved but don't include
individually shrink-wrap media or licenses, although the buyer can opt
for media packs at extra cost.

I suspect that given the minimal cost of cd reproduction, it is not worth MS
bothering with this.

When you're taking about thousands of licences it's still an
unnecessary cost which neither Microsoft nor the buyer want to bear.


--
iv Paul iv

Martyn Dewar wrote:

Actually, Supanet is owned by Time Computers Group. Who also own the
Tiny brand, but not Tiny Computers as they went under.

Actually, it isnt. Supanet is owned by Internexus
(http://www.internexusgroup.com/) who have a "close association" with
Time (aka Granville Technology Group).

Indeed. From an operating POV there's no link between the two
companies but they supposedly share the same ownership.

Perfectly legal.

Regardless of whether its legal or not, they should clearly state that
said CD is not provided, since if your PC breaks out of warranty and you
need to reinstall, I doubt you'll be a happy customer....

A buyer would be prudent to ensure it stated it *did* include the
media. After all, you don't buy a Big Mac and expect reams of small
print stating it did not include fries, a coke, apple pie, a free Mac
Donalds keyring or a night with the franchisees daughter. This is
just more "nanny state" thinking, that for some reason it's necessary
to protect the clueless from their own stupidity - anyone who spends
that kind of money expecting stuff to be included when it's not
actually advertised as being so really just begging to be ripped off.

Hardly devious as it's all legal and many vendors do the same.

However, a lot of vendors dont, and Time are the only one i've seen
selling "optimised modems" too...

Don't think I know anyone else who does that and I'd agree it's a bit
naughty.

The word "optimised" means to make as effective as possible or
increase the speed and efficiency. This implies it would perform
better with Supanet but doesn't suggest it would fail to work with
another ISP. If they were taken to task over their advertising I'd
suspect they'd lose on this point.




--
iv Paul iv

Paul Hopwood wrote:

[...]

Vendors have the right to decide how to package and differentiate
their product from their competition. Some do it purely on price and
cut every corner possible to achieve lowest cost, selling at almost
zero margin and gaining revenue elsewhere. There is evidently a
market for that kind of product otherwise they wouldn't keep selling
the crap so, while you and I might not like it, we can exercise our
right to buy elsewhere.

Quite, but the 'optimised' modem is really borderline. It is now fairly
common knowledge that Tiny do these things, but this was only after some
questions was raised in computer mags and newsgroups from unsuspecting
punters that couldn't get their modems to work with their chosen isp.

Johannes H Andersen wrote:

Quite, but the 'optimised' modem is really borderline. It is now fairly
common knowledge that Tiny do these things, but this was only after some
questions was raised in computer mags and newsgroups from unsuspecting
punters that couldn't get their modems to work with their chosen isp.

Indeed... as I said somewhere else in this thread, the use of the word
"optimised" in this context is inappropriate and misleading imho.

--
iv Paul iv

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:03:56 GMT, Simon wrote:

Hardly devious as it's all legal and many vendors do the same.

Just because it is legal, does not mean it ain't devious.


Cheers,

Guy

** I may not be perfect, but I'm
** English, and that's the next best thing!

Simon wrote in news:045Vc.232$ll5.35@newsfe2-
gui.ntli.net:

many vendors do the same

Which ones?