The previous post leaves me with a disgust toward the state of “PC-Support” today by the major manufacturers. The “solution” of running a completely unnecessary wipe clean and start over is overkill and just plain wrong, since it ignores the fact that most don’t want or need to re-configure everything from scratch again, in the absence of “config backup and restore” programs for all the major apps (like Outlook, Office, Macromedia Studio, and who knows what else).

This “mass market” approach, while understandable, leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. HP won’t take the small step of producing a recovery CD (that could also easily include a “Drivers and Setup” directory to quickly and painlessly reconfigure the major system drivers back to the “intended” state, as well as provide CD keys for the various software packages, for cases where customers have to resort to clean wipes. It is recommended by most computer literate people that one installs Windows afresh periodically anyway, and for this, it would be nice to have a backup opgtion for installed apps and configurations, so a Windows install could be floowed by an “Application Restore”. This would be a welcome additonal utility to supplement a “Wipe and Restore” that ignores the fact that most people needing to use it would want to keep the configurations and appliactions they were previously running.

There need to be a class action lawsuit by consumers to demand this as a minimum. Of course, this would initially drive prices up, but all would be forced to compete and level this out.

There seems to be something in this that leads to another “theological” observation about Churches. That is, how often do churches resort to a “package deal” to appeal to a larger audience, and end up “dumbing down” the gospel (or worse, selling out for a more “palatable” Christianity.