No Recovery For You!
When consumers purchase personal computers, they should be given the means to restore/repair their operating system via an included LIVE CD/DVD, in NOT doing so by the OEM is just plain stupid. Bear in mind that as a Microsoft Windows licensee, meaning YOU, the thing with a Windows license is that you DO NOT OWN the software, you DO NOT OWN the product, that you are paying for and by receiving a license to use that software under the terms given, you must abide by them, whether you like it or not. That doesn’t sound to user friendly does it?
What you typically have included with you computer, is a recovery CD (best case), perhaps a recovery partition that just re-images your partition setting everything back to the way it was originally or nothing at all (worst case), none of these truly do fix anything. Normally the best way to accomplish this feat is to boot from a Linux LiveCD to recover your files.
Microsoft recently filed a legal complaint against Comet, a UK retailer which the company alleges sold sets of recovery CDs without Microsoft’s blessing. While Microsoft called the CDs counterfeits, Comet says it was acting in good faith, supplying customers with recovery discs when Microsoft would not.
Microsoft noted that the recovery CDs were sold to customers who had purchased Windows-loaded PCs and laptops. Comet operates 248 stores as well as an online shopping site.
“As detailed in the complaint filed today, Comet produced and sold thousands of counterfeit Windows CDs to unsuspecting customers in the United Kingdom,” Microsoft associate general counsel David Finn said in a statement posted on Microsoft’s website.
Microsoft Corp. today issued proceedings against Comet Group PLC for allegedly creating and selling more than 94,000 sets of counterfeit Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs. The alleged counterfeits were sold to customers who had purchased Windows-loaded PCs and laptops.
“As detailed in the complaint filed today, Comet produced and sold thousands of counterfeit Windows CDs to unsuspecting customers in the United Kingdom,” said David Finn, associate general counsel, Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft. “Comet’s actions were unfair to customers. We expect better from retailers of Microsoft products — and our customers deserve better, too.”
The suit charges Comet with producing the counterfeits in a factory in Hampshire and then selling the media to customers from its retail outlets across the U.K.
Comet is currently owned by French retail company Kesa Electricals PLC, although it is reportedly being purchased by private equity firm OpCapita LLP later this year.
With an emphasis on education, engineering and enforcement, Microsoft seeks to protect its customers from counterfeiting and piracy — and ensure people get what they pay for. If customers ever question the legitimacy of their software, be it a shrink-wrapped product or recovery media, they are advised to visit http://www.howtotell.com to learn more and, if they have any doubt, report the suspicious software to Microsoft.
Comet responded with a statement of its own, saying it believes what it did was legal.
“Statement in respect of Microsoft litigation
Wednesday 4th January 2012We note that proceedings have been issued by Microsoft Corporation against Comet relating to the creation of recovery discs by Comet on behalf of its customers.
Comet has sought and received legal advice from leading counsel to support its view that the production of recovery discs did not infringe Microsoft’s intellectual property.
Comet firmly believes that it acted in the very best interests of its customers. It believes its customers had been adversely affected by the decision to stop supplying recovery discs with each new Microsoft Operating System based computer.
Accordingly Comet is satisfied that it has a good defence to the claim and will defend its position vigorously.”
UPDATE: When Microsoft was asked for some more information on its complaint, which was filed in the High Court of Justice in London. We still don’t have a copy of the full complaint, but Microsoft’s expanded statement says the PCs Comet sold already included recovery software, making the discs unnecessary. “In 2008 and 2009, Comet approached tens of thousands of customers who had bought PCs with the necessary recovery software already on the hard drive, and offered to sell them unnecessary recovery discs for £14.99,” Microsoft said. “Not only was the recovery software already provided on the hard drive by the computer manufacturer but, if the customer so desired, a recovery disc could also have been obtained by the customer from the PC manufacturer for free or a minimal amount. Illegally replicating software and then selling it is counterfeiting.”
Ask yourself, “Would Comet dare to go to court over this without a strong legal opinion from their lawyer?”. The traditional obsequious behaviour of Microsoft’s clients is to fold promptly and send money, lots of it. Thank you, Microsoft, for promoting GNU/Linux. I appreciate it. In my opinion, this could be as much about killing XP as protecting “IP”… As with the Barnes & Noble Android patent suit, I imagine discovery will be interesting.
This is rather amusing to me, as one of the last barriers to the desktop space for Linux is the retail shelf space. It could be that Comet were charging for the disks rather than just including them with the PCs that caught MS’s attention. When a customer asks me to repair or rebuild their old XP/Vista/7 machines. The first question I have to ask is “Do you have the original OS CDs to hand?” “How about backups?” 90% of the time the answer is no.
This could all be avoided if Microsoft did the decent thing for consumers, and re-write it’s OEM License to stipulate either Windows media or recovery media is included with each license, but I think we all know the chances of that happening, mainly because that would help End Users and IT Shops service their own systems, keeping them running for longer.
Let’s get this right. A consumer can produce a backup/restoration CD by running the software on the PC but Microsoft thinks it’s illegal for Comet to provide that as a service to consumers? I don’t think so. I expect the courts will laugh Microsoft out the front door. I expect other retailers will finally understand that Microsoft is a liability, not their friend. I expect more retailers will give shelf-space to GNU/Linux. It’s just the right way to do IT-retailing. I recommend to customers Linux over Windows or Apple, as the huge repository of software and the package managing system, APT, make it easy for the end user to support their system.
If the drive is toast, then the only thing you can do is pay the expense of sending it out for recovery which tends to get VERY expensive. OEM’s like Dell, tend to install a recovery partition, but then that only works if the drive is functioning, see the problem? So by not having recovery disc, you are forced to call your OEM, for $5 – $40, on top of OS reinstall costs and a new hard drive.
So, Comet is selling a Microsoft product that is not fit for purpose (IE – selling a operating system, in a state that it could not be recovered as you had no media to do so!) Anybody else who has had to fix a friends computer, were they were not given any OS media, but the PC has a valid OS license will fully apprecieate Comet on this matter. Indeed, I recall a situation were I called Microsoft who were utterly useless, saying “yes” the PC has a legal operating system and “no” they couldn’t send me recovery disc’s as they never sold the PC. Too me, Microsoft selling PC’s directly or indirectly, without the ability to service them and maintain them to a fully working state (IE the Operating system disc) is in my opinion indeed selling a product not fit for purpose.
Usually there is a recovery partition, but often these are so complicated I wonder how the average user is supposed to use them. Some even need the PC to be properly working to actually recover from! If its a Dell that’s okay as I have a full selection of Dell recovery/OS disks to hand. If its an old XP Acer/Bizzaro brand then its pretty much tough luck as MS have tightened up the activation checking databases and unless you use the exact manufacturer OEM CD now you are screwed. They really don’t want you re-using that XP now, they want you to go out and spend money needlessly on Windows 7.
Not exact pricing but close enough
It can be so frustrating, especially when you are just trying to re-install a OS for a customer that the machine has a licence stuck to it for. At the end of the day there is no change, the user carries on using XP/Vista just as they paid for a few years back but oh no…..I now have to spend around 90 minutes for every laptop I buy in for customers creating the damn recovery DVDs. If I leave it to them then chances are a year later that it would never be done. People rarely backup their let alone create a recovery disk.
The Valuable bit of the Windows Product – the bit you pay money for, and the bit Microsoft care about in a software audit – is the COA – Certificate Of Authenticity – slapped on the side of OEM Machines. As long as you have a (Non-Counterfeit) one of those, that’s the license.
You can take any standard XP/Vista/7 Media, install it, and throw that key in, needing a telephone software activation at best, and end up with a genuine and licensed windows instance.
Without further details, it appears Comet did not include Microsoft Authorised Windows/Recovery media, which would need the legal COA to work (yes, ignoring BIOS Activation for the sake of clarity, here), a pragmatic, but illegal solution to the problem of failed customer PC’s, especially hard drive failures, which take the recovery partition.
So Yeah, Comet may be technically breaking their Microsoft contract, but it probably resulted in minimum illegal installs, especially if they checked you were entitled to order it before by having an applicable PC before selling it to you.
If Microsoft don’t want to do this themselves maybe they should provide it as a service to the OEMs. Then the OEM can advertise that as part of their product. I for one would make sure I only bought computers from an OEM that offered the service.
I think everyone realizes at this point that Microsoft (and some OEMs) doesn’t want you to recover your system. They want you to just buy a new computer. Otherwise they would make it much easier to get recovery CD’s — like making them downloadable from their web sites at no additional change like they do with drivers.
