NEC, Gateway, Sony ... all pretty much use a weird type of recovery disk
package. I have been buying my desktops from a vendor that sells generic
computer, and the OEM package he carries seems to be relatively friendly
to most machines and does not carry the same restrictions of the
big name players. Windows is pretty much the same between different
computers, usually what you lose with generics is you may have to hunt for
drivers yourself. Personal experience is Gateway and Toshiba is pretty
good with that on the website, my favorite computer is Sony and they
probably has the worst support on providing drivers (another good reason
why I run Mandrake on it instead of Windows).
There is no manufacturer that gives real good support when it comes to
Windows software. When I bought my first Gateway I had problem with
transfering big files over their network card, and the girl I talked to
gave me the same ... Windows problem ... thing. To Gateways credit I got a
supervisor calling me 3 days later, he told me that he checked the phone
calls and noticed that mine did not end in a happy tone. All in all, he
was not very helpful either, but the fact that somebody checked and called
tells me they are not the worst out there.
Andrew
========================
On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Joshua J. Kugler wrote:
> > > Maybe I'll see if I can get a second hard drive, install to that, and go
> > > from there. Or maybe that's not worth the trouble, and I'll get a real
> > > Windows CD.
> >
> > The latter would probably be easier. Alternatively you can go complain to
> > Gateway. You can tell them that you ARE installing this on a Gateway
> > computer, but their check is failing because of a virtual environment.
> > However, you PAID for the win98 license (included in the cost of the
> > computer) AND you ARE installing it on that system. INSIST that they give
> > you a workaround to their too-intrusive check OR alternatively a version of
> > Win98 that you can use. It takes end-user customers complaining about this
> > kind of thing to make them stop.
>
> Well, I've contacted Gateway. Guess what? It's not their fault, or at least
> they say. This is what I get from their help:
>
> Quote --------
> Thank you for replying back to Gateway's Online Technical Support. I
> apologize any inconvenience, however, Microsoft mandated that all OEM
> vendors of it's Windows software must integrate this security layer into
> the operating system and motherboard BIOS to combat piracy.
>
> Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
> End Quote ------
>
> Piracy? It won't combat piracy. All it takes is reverse engineering
> biosid.exe. What it will combat is a user taking a fully licensed copy of
> windows and trying to run it under VMWare or Win4Lin. This is really scary,
> because it appears that ALL OEM vendors will have to do this.
>
> So, Gateway has said they can't give me anything. Who should I go to next?
>
> j----- k-----
>
>
>
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