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Story: PC makers find ways to extend XP's life
Media?
Thing is, this is fine if you have the relevant media... Our Dells only shipped with Vista media, so re-installing XP (which was pre-installed) is impossible without resorting to another license key.
Although, I am now having mental bells ringing about a method of extracting the license key from the registry...
My hard drive failed about 2 months ago and the only way I could recover was to mirror the drive of one of my work colleagues and strip all his data etc off!
It does seem to be vague as to whether CDs will be shipped with forthcoming Dells. I've read stories recently regarding other manufacturers (I think Sony?) who say they'll continue to ship media, possibly at a small cost. Thing is, you can almost guarantee they'll be those ridiculous recovery CDs that format your hard drive and won't allow you to boot to the recovery console or do a "Rescue".
Things would be simple if there was only one kind of CD for the operating system, which accepted any valid license key (assuming you knew it!). At least then I could buy one on e-Bay or make a copy (must be legal to own the CD if I have the paid-for OS on a machine) for re-installation as and when required.
Mind you, I shouldn't whinge. Thank you to HP and Dell for reacting to consumer demand in a far better manner than MS have.
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