Thinking....don't do it on your own.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

It's not just Dell any more. It's just about everybody, though I think Toshiba still includes some form of recovery disc. That's why I tell all of my customers about it. "There are no restore or recovery discs included. Somebody's cutting corners at the manufacturer's. If you don't have us create them as part of one of our security and set-up packages, then making them on your own is one of the first things you'll want to do."

Toshiba still provided Recovery CD's w/their laptops a few years ago when I got mine (3 CD set at that for XP.)

It still sucks that most of them have done away with the CD's. And this may be a dumb question, but how would I make my own Restoration CD?

[anode_probe]

It's true that apple provides recovery discs, but I have noticed a trend with people used to the windows world. They will run the install (which isn't exactly that neccessary) then throw out the disc, only to find out later that there is no partition on the hard drive from which to run diagnostics, reinstalls, etc. They then complain when it is 2 years down the road and they have to buy the discs in order to get past the flashing question mark.