| Very few (if any) will give you recovery discs anymore. They expect the user to create them after they get the machine home and set up. In my experience, the average computer user doesn't know about this and runs into trouble when their hard drive dies and they are stuck buying the recovery discs from the manufacturer. You are right about HP not giving you the Windows CD/DVD though. I have an HP desktop and a Gateway laptop. Neither came with Windows discs. Luckily I made the recovery discs for my desktop when I set it up. After nearly 6 years, the hard drive died. Fortunately, I had my important files (pictures, music, documents) backed up on an external hard drive. It was easy enough to reinstall everything. After that, I uninstalled a lot of the crap that came with the system just like I did years ago when I first bought it.
My previous desktop was a custom built one. A friend of mine owned his own shop. It cost a lot more than a pre-built unit but it had the components I wanted and when something wasn't working right, I brought it back to him for repair. Unfortunately, he couldn't compete on price with the large manufacturers and went out of business. The average user was more interested in a low price than quality. | 
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