Microsoft stopped supplying discs to save money but to also get us over a barrel now they see Comet has stepped in and shown them up and possibly made a small profit they don't like it. You have to aske why they stopped supplying the discs in the first place. I don't understand thios world nowadays. When I buy a product i presume i won it and can do what I like with it, evidently that is not the case. I have been thinking of sueing Microsoft because I bought a laptop with Vista on it which was the worst OS ever and had to buy W7 to replace it.

brindly

You own any PC you have bought, and you can do whatever you like with the hardware.

The software is a different matter, you only have a licence to use the software, you cannot make unauthorised copies, redistribute, or decompile the software. The copyright and ownership of the software remain the property of the software company, be it Microsoft, Norton, Adobe or who-ever.

Microsoft stopped shipping Windows CDs with PCs for a couple of reasons, the main one was that it was making it all too easy for people to make a copy of the OS disc and give it to their mates. If the licence key was rejected on installation it was a simple matter to contact MS on an 0800 number and answer a few questions to get a new key.

The other reason was that they're largely a waste of money, few people ever used them, most were lost before they were needed, and it's relatively easy to back up your own custom installation onto a DVD or two which will get your PC back to how you like it rather than how Dell or Packard Bell etc ship it full of crapware that you remove as soon as you turn it on first time...

The Factory Image on my HP computer has very little crap on it. The last time I restored to factory settings after installing various software I use regularly eg Firefox, AVG, Mailwasher and the like, I made a backup copy of the system files using Acronis TI to a folder on my USB hard drive. This means I can get my basic system up and running within a short space of time if it should go pear shaped or is starting to play up due to being an old system. I also make a backup of my system on approx. a monthly basis should I pick up a virus etc. or software that is playing up or proving difficult to remove. All my data, downloads, video and audio files etc. are on my USB drive. Having a large internal HD it is partitioned and a backup of the data etc. on my USB drive is backed up to the internal drive should the USB drive fail catastrophically.