do all computers take this long on install?

toasterman

This might be just me being picky, but I work in IT, and the last few machines I've set up for people have taken an incredibly long time to load.

Right now I'm setting up a HP Compaq nx7300 laptop for someone, and I've been waiting the last hour, clicking buttons, and still haven't got to the start button.
I'm wondering if HP are deliberately trying to make setups take as long as possible.

First I got the install options, username, etc, reboots and starts "HP Recovery manager" which seemed to take longer than usual. Then, it spent the next 15mins creating a recovery partition on the hard drive. Don't these come on the hard drive already anymore?
Not only do you not get recovery discs and are expected to make your own (1.5-2 hours) afterwards, the recovery partition isn't even set up when you take the machine out the box.

This was followed by another 10mins of "software being installed" from HP, before I finally got to a desktop.

I'm here now so I better get on with installing software, etc, but just wondered if all machines take this long. I'm charging by the hour you see - I want to make money but not rip my clients off.

maninwhitecoat

I'm not sure about the HP's tbh, but my Toshiba came with a recovery partition which was hidden. have you tried to see if the laptop had a hidden partition that was a recovery partition? i agree that most manufacturers have more and more of their own "software" to install when refreshing a computer, can be quite annoying as most of the software is poor compared to other commercially availble software.
Come to think of it, it did take quite a while even when using the recovery partition on my laptop to restore it...
What happened to the good old days when the recovery cds were provided and all you had to do was put them in and install?

gremlin666_2

I had my Packard Bell laptop up and running in around 15 minutes after i got it home from the shop. Then about 15 minutes to burn the recovery DVD. I was well impressed with the short time it took.

toasterman

No no - it does have a recovery partition on the hard disk. But it didn't seem to at the time I bought it... or I wouldn't have had to wait 15mins during the install while it apparently created the partition to later recover from.
So not only do I have to wait 15mins for it to create a partition that surely should have already been there, but I still have to make my own recovery discs, because they won't give me a dvd in the box to restore from.

They should give you restore discs. I emailed in to HP via a comments page I found somewhere, and suggested that warning me the second I boot a new laptop that I have to make recovery discs for when it fails, doesn't advertise their reliability very well.
A month later I got a reply from some Indian call centre asking me to state more clearly the technical problem I have that I need help with.
It's nice to know they read the suggestions.

But yes..
Why can't I unbox it, and it go straight to Windows? It could then ask me to choose a new username.. or change the name of the pc if the one it gives me isn't appropriate.
Lets face it - most people couldn't give a monkeys what their pc is called, and if you're about to join it to a domain, you wind up creating a pointless user called "user" half the time, used for all of 3 minutes while you do that.

As for bundled software - why do some HP's business-aimed laptops come with a trial version of Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition? If its for businesses, they'll likely already have some network version of their own antivirus already...meaning they'll have to uninstall it. One place recently I had to uninstall Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition.. trial version.. only to reinstall Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition.. network version...immediately after.

I should just recommend people buy macs.