As an anti-piracy measure, Microsoft has quietly implemented a policy through which hardware manufacturers who license Windows directly from Microsoft no longer ship a full backup CD of the OS with their systems. Instead, buyers receive two options for disaster recovery: a "recovery CD" locked into that type of system, or a hard-drive-based approach when a "recovery image" of the OS is loaded on a separate partition. Both approaches appear to have some serious shortcomings, not the least of which is that PC buyers might not realize what they´re getting until it´s too late.

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