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Asus wrote:
ASUS is devoted to creating environment-friendly products/packaging to safeguard consumers' health while minimizing the impact on the environment. In order to reduce the use of substances harmful to the environment, the EeePC and notebook product package does not come with the notebook support DVD. For system recovery, use the F9 recovery function instead.
Translated:
Asus wrote:
ASUS is devoted to maximize our profit margin. In order to save a few pennies, we won't give you a physical copy of the system disks. Forget about installing a new OS, because you're screwed if you want to go back.
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Not many computers do come with recovery disks these days. At best, the HDD contains images you can burn out yourself, but since the eee doesn't have a cd/dvd burner, that'd be rather pointless...
/Mats
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As long as they make the .iso available for download, in addition to the F9 function, that would seem to satisfy all parties?
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Well for us NetBooks users we don't even have a DVD player nowadays so a recovery disk is useless for most of us and, if we can live without it, it can't be that difficult ;-) I think the F9 solution is much better anyways - always with you and no hunting around for a DVD you last looked at on the day of purchase and filed away somewhere you can't remember.
Don't see a problem with this announcement. Also was quite happy when computer manufactors stopped printing out the useless and huge manuals than no one ever read...
Saying that they should provide a ghost image of the recovery DVD for use when you get a complete hard disk failure.
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I want a recovery disk:
1. delete the recovery partition to install dual boot alternate OS, and get it wrong the first couple of times.
2. make a mistake installing <insert favorite distro here> to an SD card, and whack the mbr/bootloader.
3. buy a used EEE, and want to make sure it's clean, malware wise.
4. have a hard disk crash or SDD failure
5. want to install a larger drive.
With a recovery disk, you can always get it back, no matter what happens, even if something goes wrong with the recovery partition.
Steve
Last edited by N7XSQ (2010-03-11 1:01:35 pm)
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While I disagree with this move, it has been becoming the standard with PC for the past few years.
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Not having a DVD on the asus is not a legitimate excuse. I bought a pioneer USB DVD burner for less than $50. Most people also have access to another computer which can be used to create a bootable USB flash drive.
I was pleasantly surprised that the EEE came with recovery disks but that isnt the industry standard and hasnt been for a long while.
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Removing the DVD recovery disc isn't a bad thing. Especially since eee PCs don't have optical drives.
However, not replacing the missing recovery disc with an SD card or USB flash drive recovery disk is a bad thing.
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rokytnji wrote:
No problem
http://www.vertor.com/download/asus+eee … dros+linux
Doesn't help with newer systems... And this especially bad news since F9 isn't always reliable...
They should at least still offer a download-able ISO for emergencies. But it looks like we'll have to image the drive as soon as we get it to generate our own Recovery option.
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There are online links to over 100 OS versions over at http://distrowatch.com/ 
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Wouldn't be a problem if they sold Eee PC's without an OS. Then we could just put our own and not worry about a restore. But they're charging us for the OS and that's the problem...
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I generally clone my systems at various states. I always make a new machine image before i even touch anything. External hard drives are so cheap these days and they will hold a ton of images. Clonezilla ftw!
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Well that should at least cut down on the "I 'lost' my recovery disc, can someone let me barrow theirs?" threads...
I agree with zeo, if i dont get a M$ disc then dont charge me for the OS at all.
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They are not charging you for the disc that is something physical, which you could actually claim ownership to... they are charging you for their intellectual property.
Call the provider and tell them that you cannot agree to the terms of the EULA and as instructed by the EULA you wish a refund for the software. Dell got hit hard with this tactic before they began selling systems with linux on them.
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Good advice, if we all do that with every new system it might hit them hard enough to start considering to at least offer an ISO download option for when people do run into trouble or stop trying to force Windows on us.
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If I remeber right, I think you get all of 7$ dollars back...
but still worth it as a statement.
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The cost of a Recovery DVD is still less for them, in mass DVD's only cost very little. So they would be losing more than the cost of providing the Recovery option and they'll probably start getting wailed on by MS after awhile 
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kwildman wrote:
They are not charging you for the disc that is something physical, which you could actually claim ownership to... they are charging you for their intellectual property.
All this time i thought you were paying for the CD key on the bottom of the laptop...
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this is why I wish they would sell blank computers to let us put on whatever OS we wanted too, while cutting down the cost
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Most laptops/netbooks nowadays don't come with recovery CDs.
Option 1: Burn your own through an external DVD writer
Option 2: Buy a set of disks from the manufacturer (Cost varies by manufacturer)
Option 3: CD/DVD drive sharing under Windows? (Can it burn, too?)
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Wow, I'm glad I got my notebook before this came into effect. I chose an ASUS laptop, and among the reasons I chose it over similar notebooks was because it came with recovery DVDs in case something happened. Downloading a recovery ISO is not an option when you're on dial-up.
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It's good to make your own image backups in any case. You can customize and update it, so you don't have to go through setting up the system each time you restore.
As for dial up, there are many public WiFi locations you can drop by and do the download if need be... unless you're in the UK...
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/ … 470,00.htm
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Unfortunately this move has been the industry norm for years. Probably not even the cost per disc, but the logistics of keeping different model discs apart, another item that must be stocked, tracked, etc.
In a machine that ships without recovery media on CD/DVD's, I have never seen one that does not give you the option to burn it off yourself. I have also never seen a machine like this that doesn't bug you until you burn off the discs. I have never seen a computer tech that doesn't recommend burning them off as one of the first things to do after setting up the machine. However I keep reading stories of "Damned Dell / HP / Acer didn't give me a disc, now I'm up a creek!"
I was setting up a Gateway LT3100, which doesn't have an optical drive, yet it offered to let me burn off the recovery media. I have a $20 USB to IDE/SATA connector and a spare burner, not everyone does!
While useful for some purposes, a recovery partition isn't the answer. If the recovery partition gets borked by virus or user error, or if the user wishes to remove it to free up space. As well if the system suffers a hard drive failure, the recovery partition on a crashed hard drive won't help when installing a new drive.
To answer the question of "Well you can download the ISO right?" The answer is probably not. Mostly due to licensing restrictions from Microsoft (even though they could limit it to serial number or something). Which is why you're only allowed to burn the recovery media ONCE (I've even heard stories of a system not even rewriting the disc after the verification found a fault). Since these programs are normally hard coded to burn the recovery at full tilt, which is usually counter productive to long term storage, if I'm burning recovery media, I'll then duplicate the DVD at a slower write speed.
I was setting up a "Business-grade" Compaq a few years ago, and in lieu of burning media, it could generate ISOs of WindowsXP, and another of the support applications / drivers. Again due to licensing it could only create the Windows ISO once, even though you could copy it an infinite amount of times, and it would generate the ISO for supporting applications an infinite number of times.
It would be nice if in lieu of something that could only burn recovery media to an attached burner, you could create ISOs that could be transported to another burner equipped computer (or stored for future reference) along with an easy to use tool for novice users to a) burn off the ISO b) To generate a USB flash recovery disk. In my experience the creating of recovery media was a painful experience that took two hours before it even started burning a disc.
Normally after making recovery discs I wipe the hard drive and put a clean install of the OS on, saving the recovery discs if the system must be sent in for repair, or if the system is resold.
Before sending in an HP laptop with a defective nVidia chipset I restored from the discs. Man, what an annoying experience. The HP utility kept wanting me to register, even if I said "I already registered", it kept trying to sell me an extended service plan, regardless of the option I selected, and of course the king of bloatware, Norton Internet Security kept bugging me to activate a trial of their junk (pure an utter garbage actually). Now I remember why I'm "evil" and download clean copies of the OS installer from the internet.
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