Interesting Memo

I can see it being a nightmare for Dell support. Most consumers who get new
PCs don't think like the people who post on this group. Many will not see
the value of creating these restore disks, until it's too late.
But the concept is not entirely new. I had to do this when I bought my brand
spanking new Mac Performa from Sears in 1992. 20-some floppies and 3 hours
later, the entire OS and Application bundle was backed up. Well, at least
Dell customers won't have babysit the process shuffling disks back and
forth -- at least the ones with DVD burners won't have to.

"pengulin" wrote in message
...
I can see it being a nightmare for Dell support. Most consumers who get new
PCs don't think like the people who post on this group. Many will not see
the value of creating these restore disks, until it's too late.
But the concept is not entirely new. I had to do this when I bought my
brand
spanking new Mac Performa from Sears in 1992. 20-some floppies and 3 hours
later, the entire OS and Application bundle was backed up. Well, at least
Dell customers won't have babysit the process shuffling disks back and
forth -- at least the ones with DVD burners won't have to.



Currently the compressed image is small enough to fit on CDR media.
Thankfully, dual-layer DVD R/RW drives are dropping in price considerably
recently.

I picked one up for less than $70 a couple of weeks ago.

But your point is correct; it relies on the user to actually create the
discs and beyond that do no damage to the restore image on the hard disk (or
the hdd itself to not fail).


Stew

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:29:39 -0600, Brad Licatesi
wrote:

In article 1111287896.570291@news, says...
I don't see this as a big problem, as long as it helps keep the price of the
system down. With blank CD's costing pennies a peice, it is a negligible
cost to the buyer to burn the copies themselves. I think that when the
customer gets the system and FIRST turns it on, it should give them the
option to burn backup copies then, or place a shortcut on the desktop.

It does. When you turn the system on for the first time, even BEFORE
you fill in your info the system asks you to burn a set of re-install
CDs. You can do it at any time later if you say no and skip it.


OKay. I either missed that or said "No". What must be done at this
point for me to generate useful re-install CDs? I do have a stack of
CD-Rs, but no DVD+Rs as yet; just a couple of DVD+RWs available at
this time.

Where is the command to generate reinstall CDs?

Regards,
de ~ Vince ~

"Vince" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:29:39 -0600, Brad Licatesi
wrote:

In article 1111287896.570291@news, says...
I don't see this as a big problem, as long as it helps keep the price of
the
system down. With blank CD's costing pennies a peice, it is a negligible
cost to the buyer to burn the copies themselves. I think that when the
customer gets the system and FIRST turns it on, it should give them the
option to burn backup copies then, or place a shortcut on the desktop.

It does. When you turn the system on for the first time, even BEFORE
you fill in your info the system asks you to burn a set of re-install
CDs. You can do it at any time later if you say no and skip it.


OKay. I either missed that or said "No". What must be done at this
point for me to generate useful re-install CDs? I do have a stack of
CD-Rs, but no DVD+Rs as yet; just a couple of DVD+RWs available at
this time.

Where is the command to generate reinstall CDs?

Regards,
de ~ Vince ~



On the newer systems, it can be found under:

start-programs-dell accessories (?)- create a restore disc.


Stew