So I'm reformatting my thinkpad hard drive because it's been bluescreen crashing about twice a day for the past week. When I bought it from IBM several years ago it was preinstalled with XP and Office. They didn't send any discs along with it, but I have the license keys. So now that I am reformatting I need the discs to reinstall. But the thing is, IBM refuses to send me the discs and is telling me I have to buy the software all over again - and they don't care that I paid for it.
Needless to say I am livid. WTF, IBM? I guess it doesn't matter that I was a customer and paid for software. And here I have two totally worthless MS access keys, and no one willing to send me the disks of software I paid for. Fuck you IBM and Microsoft. I've got a brand new Mac sitting right here....
Go Macs!!! =)
but yah....phooey on IBM & Microsoft....hmmm why didn't they send you a disc when you first bought it weird. I've got an instal for XP floating around here somewhere, but it's in NorCal and of course, you're down there, so lot of good it does you.
In theory you could probably find a place to 'download' it from though I personally wouldn't be comfortable trusting an OS that I'd procured in that fashion.
Posted by: daMongolian | December 15, 2006 at 03:40 PM
Yeah, I bought a Dell for my wife about 6 months ago and when it showed up w/out the XP disc I yelled at 'em about it. Turns out this is no longer standard practice and Dell charges $10 for the disc. (But, they were at least reasonable enough to not charge me for it since it wasn't made clear on their website).
And, yup, it pretty much f*cks the user. Having this disc is essential for a couple of reasons. First, as you've discovered, if you actually need to rebuild from scratch, the "repair disc" that they provide is basically useless. Second, if you really don't want all the extra crap that the OEM installs ("No, no, no, and NO again! I really don't want the 60-day trial of AOL/EarthLink/Norton/Dell Super-Mega-Ultra-Cool-Support-Service") ... the best way to get rid of it is to just re-install the OS from scratch.
But maybe that's just you and I, Heather. We're probably the only two people in the world who would actually like to have the disc that represents ~30% of the cost of the computer. :-P
Posted by: Broofa | December 16, 2006 at 03:20 AM
Ha ha - take that Microsoft :) I heart my Mac.
Posted by: mike | December 16, 2006 at 12:37 PM
Hahaha! I knew you'd come around. Unfortunately it took a tragic rip-off/customer service evilness to do it, but hey. You'll like it here, computers don't crash, they do what we want them to do! Donate that piece of crap to a school for a nice tax write-off and buy an XP cd (I'd let you jack mine but they make that impossible now. And then use disk image on your mac to make copies of any software you may need hard copies of. Someone just showed me how to do this on my computer and it's super easy.
Posted by: pinky the first | December 17, 2006 at 09:16 PM
actually I have already frozen and crashed my mac. It took about 3 days of usage to do that. I'm not super impressed with the mac so far. It's got better power on/off, but I can do way more things way faster on the pc mostly because I type very fast (and love my thinkpad keyboard) and use shortcut (ctrl, alt and shift) and right click menus constantly. I have to admit I hate the apple button. It screws me up constantly when I try to ctrl-c ctrl-v. And I hate that there is no backbase on the mac only delete. I use both constantly and the mac only has one. So so far, much of the features I use constantly are not on the mac, not to mention the crazy red, yellow and green circles on the wrong side of the window, and the way they do menus at the top not attached to the window.....
Posted by: heathervescent | December 18, 2006 at 11:12 AM