Why I like building my own computer!

I had the displeasure of dealing with an HP Pavillion Core i3 Desktop this past week.  The computer was corrupted with malware that prevented anything from being installed.  This happened even though the user was logged in as a non-admin user.  I had burned the four recovery DVDs in case Windows 8 needed to be reinstalled.  This particular computer had already been upgraded to Windows 8.l via the Windows Store (a really STUPID and time consuming way of upgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1).  The problems started when I couldn't reinstall Windows 8 with the restore disks - there was a problem with DVD 4.  The dumb thing about HP/Compaq computers is they only allow you to make ONE COPY of the restore disks!  Not so with Dell.  Dell also lets you download new versions of the restore disks from their support website once you are logged into your account!  Luckily, I could 'refresh' the HP Pavilion from the restore image on the hard drive.

More problems ensued.  It downloaded and installed 99 Windows 8 updates.  Then it tried to install another 46 after that.  However, it hung on update 35 of 46 and I had to shut down the computer.  I tried again and it still hung up.  I eventually got most of it to update, but I could never update to Windows 8.1 from the Windows Store.  I gave up on that.  To be safe, I cloned the drive onto another drive sector by sector with ToDo Backup Free Edition.  This took about 5 hours.  This cloned drive is my backup for this STUPID HP COMPUTER.

Now, having given up trying to update to Windows 8.1, I needed to reinstall Office 2013.  Office 2013 hides your product key though!  I tried some possible fixes (ProduKey 64 bit, Belarc Advisor, and the VBScript OSPP.vbs tool that comes with Office 2013 itself).  However, when I was poking around my son's Lenovo Core i7 ThinkPad, I noticed that the Office 2013 install file that I had downloaded for that computer had the serial number.

THIS IS WHY I LIKE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND USE LIBREOFFICE!

Now, I had built a Core i5 Windows 8.1 Desktop last fall and the problems with the HP computer noted above would not happen since that was a generic build.  However, as noted above, Dell has a much better recovery disk policy than HP!  So, I would buy a Dell over an HP any day (if I were to buy a name brand Windows computer).