/ME GOT A NEW LAPTOP!!

[Garda]

dick smith (kinda like radio shack for .au) was having a sale. i got this one

not from dick smith, i went to another store and they price matched and took off 1% :)

i was actually going with a couple other ones in mind, they were clearance stock, but i didn't want dirty display laptops that dirty people had been touching with their ugly grubby little hands you don't know who's been putting their dirty usb drives in there

this is very simular to one of the ones that i wanted to get

i think it was kinda an impulse buy at the same time cos i ended up leaving it at my mate's place for a week while i move home.

But i'm so happy. I've totally wanted my own laptop for like ever.

especially since at the start of the year when i moved out from my perant's place and have basically had no computer. Using computers at uni and having to borrow and do shit like that REALLY sucks. Saving my money feels really good now :)

Problem is like most laptops i got vista home without an install cd.

i'm thinking of just using knoppix and

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip > /mnt/samba.mount.somewhere/image.img.gz

and just burning that do a DVD in case i ever wanna actually use windows at some point on the computer, i did have to pay for it afterall. It's a 60GB SATA drive but i'm going to assume that most of that will just be zeros since it's a new hard drive.

[RobotChild]

My laptop count - Zero :(

[Garda]

actually i forgot to add, and i would really like to know

1) what do the compaq recovery cds do. Are they basically windows install cds, how might they be different.

2) i didn't need to verify that my version of windows was legit (i didn't even connect to the internet) i thought WGA connects regularly to see if you're running a proper version of windows or not. I'm guessing it was already activated by compaq. am i going to need to connect to the internet regularly.

[Deveant]

compaq recovery CDs are the same as pretty much all packaged system recovery cds, pretty much it is an image of the compute as of the stat of purchace, so say if u need to reformat, u use the recovery CD and it will load the OS, Drivers, Special programs, some have AV's and Firewalls (mostly trials), and such.

Also about XP and WGA, when u buy a packaged system (laptops, or wholemade computers, no DIY involved) you dont actualy get a proper copy of Windows as in if you would go out and by Windows it self. What u get instead is a 1 Signitured licence, were your copy of XP is for one machien only, and thats the machien it was shipped with.

Therefore XP will not need to authenticate becuase it can only be loaded from the recovery CD, which can only work on systems exactly the same as yours, and then they would have recived there own copy of the recovery (unless off the back of a truck).

[Garda]

goddamnit, i read this, which just confused me more than anything else

http://www.epinions.com/content_1474011268

basically what it says, even though i thought it's not 100% clear, is that compaq have 2 kinds of recovery disks. The normal ones that mostly everyone gets (which i didn't get by the way, but have to generate and burn on my own), are only there to get the files from your hidden partition and put them onto your c:, which if i'm using linux, i'm going to just want to get rid of the hidden partition and everything else

then there is the other one, which as i understand is like a customised version of the windows install cd, which is really the one that i want. The one that will let me install windows from scratch.

Why do compaq have to be so gay about things

i think dell give you an install cd

[Jester]

Actually Dell is starting to do the same thing with the hidden partition. Really a lot of the manufactures are switching to this prob going to get rid of the install CDs all together I guess costing them more money that they want to save.

You should be able to generate the 2nd kind of install disk from the hidden partition though. If I remember correctly. You have to consult the instructions or Compaq/HP tech support about it though.

[Deveant]

:S hmm damn, acer have been doing the "burn ur own bloody disks" thing for a while now, though IBM laptops still were shipped with the recovery CD's.

Aswell for then shipping out a 'true' copy of XP it ends up being more expensive on there half, as well as the instore cost (for Aus it would increase by around $100-$150).

Though this leads to my next question, is it illegal to use a torrent / warze to download a copy of XP though use ur original XP key? (found on the bottom of the laptop). My idea behind this is thinking it may come under backing up ur disks... the long hard tedios donwloading way lol.

[Jester]

IMO no but legally I think it is because that key is for a stripped up OEM version of Win XP and what you would be downloading would be full blown XP Home or Pro. 8)

[VaKo]

Image the HD, probally the easy thing to do. Can you not just get hold of the restore CD's from compaq? Might cost a few $$ but maybe worth it.