On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 6:53 AM, Gilbert Sullivan <whirly...@comcast.net>wrote:
> A very good point. I was going to mention that the restore discs provided > by some vendors (via this method of creating them using a utility provided > by the vendor) will let you perform a clean OS installation which omits some > or all of the "extraneous" or third party software that comes with the > factory image. That's a very nice feature since, otherwise, I'll just be > buying another license and doing a clean installation without the cr*pola > added by the OEM anyway. > > It also lets any subsequent owner of the system get a nice, clean Windows > image (well, as nice and clean as they get) on the system. > > I don't use Windows on any personal systems these days, but it was surely > nice to have the option of an installation without all of the weird stuff > added by the computer maker because of all of those sweetheart deals with > their business partners. The last laptop I bought for a friend was a Toshiba some 5 years ago. Their recovery partition/backup utility included virtually all of the crapware - even the trial version of Office 2003 - maybe things are different now. I suppose YMMV depending on vendor, etc., but for the OP I would definitely do a full disk image with Clonezilla regardless of what choice he makes with the built-in recovery options. Then all he needs to do is change user name possibly before selling if he restores from backup Clonezilla image, if that day comes. Just my $0.02, especially since the last Windows 7 disk image I made with Clonezilla took 15 minutes, it seems like a good idea regardless if you ever use it or not.
