HP screws Presario buyers

HP IS PULLING the Microsoft "screw the customer" train at full speed, and once again, you lose.

As is so common nowadays, people are buying PCs with Windows MeII installed and quickly realising how broken it is. What do they do? Rip it off. HP is going out of its way to make that problematic.

In its defence, HP has put out decent products for some time, and only recently has it started the task of cratering quality of service to milk the bottom line. Microsoft doesn't really care about customers as long as they are locked in, so its antics are no surprise, but HP playing along is a shock.

What is the problem? If you buy a new MeII based PC, and you want to install your copy of XP so things actually work, you can't, HP doesn't provide drivers. Look at the Compaq branded Presario SR2163WM, a thoroughly unremarkable Pentium 4 on an ATI 1100 machine, crapware infested.

You can see the full specs here.

So, what if you don't want the MeII DRM infection? You are SOL. One look at the drivers page shows the problem, MeII and MeII-64 drivers only.

If you want XP, do the drivers even exist? To find out, I contacted HP support, and here is the result, sad though it is. The only thing edited is the name of the person on the other end, he was helpful and I don't want to see him fired for HP corporate stupidity.

charlie demerjian: Thanks
HP Employee: You are welcome
. HP Employee: Please give me 5 minutes to check the specification of the computer.
charlie demerjian: OK
charlie demerjian: Take your time
HP Employee: Thank you.
HP Employee: Thank you for staying online.
HP Employee: I understand that the PC is pre installed with the vista home basic and you have changed the operating system of the computer, am I right?
charlie demerjian: About to change it, I am looking for drivers, Vista is horrible.
charlie demerjian: And yes, it is home basic
HP Employee: Alright, Charlie.
HP Employee: HP Strongly recommends to use the same operating system which was installed on the computer since if you upgrade the operating system the drivers for all the device might not be available and they might not work properly. However, I will do my best to help you.
charlie demerjian: All I need to know is if there is driver support, and where to get them. I know computers very well, and I can do it without a problem as long as I have the drivers
HP Employee: Please give me 5 minutes. I will check out if the drivers are available and will give you the web link to download the drivers, if available.
charlie demerjian: OK, thanks.
HP Employee: Thank you.
charlie demerjian: The official driver page is here
charlie demerjian: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3339275&lang=en&
charlie demerjian: but there is not even a hint of XP drivers
HP Employee: Okay, Charlie.
HP Employee: Yes, you are right.
HP Employee: I will search if original drivers are available . Please wait for 5 more minutes.
charlie demerjian: NP.
HP Employee: Thank you.
HP Employee: Thank you for the patience.
HP Employee: The link to download the graphics driver is :
HP Employee: http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonx-xp.html
charlie demerjian: There is nothing provided by HP?
charlie demerjian: I can hunt down the divers for the components at the vendors web sites, but doesn't HP provide drivers for their own machines?
HP Employee: Charlie, the drivers for this model for windows XP has not been released .
charlie demerjian: Are they going to be released? I don't think it is too much to ask for HP to provide drivers for a current OS.
HP Employee: Charlie, the computer is shipped with an OEM operating system that is licensed to work with Hp computers. We do release drivers and updates, however, these are for the OEM operating system that we ship with the computer, for which we take the license.
HP Employee: You can still use the OEM drivers with the retail Operating system, however, we cannot assure that they will work properly.
charlie demerjian: I am not asking you for a license for XP, I have several, I just need to know one way or the other if HP will provide XP drivers for their machine.
charlie demerjian: The OEM drivers on the XP gold or SP2 CD will not be current enough for this machine, so that is why I am going to HP.
charlie demerjian: Lets start again with a simple yes or no question.
charlie demerjian: Does HP provide XP drivers for model SR2163WM?
HP Employee: Charlie, as I mentioned this computer is licensed to work with Windows Vista. However, the Windows XP drivers for the computer may be released at a later stage. I do not have a exact release date on when the drivers will become available at Hp website.
HP Employee: In the meantime, if you wish, I can try to search in the third party websites for the drivers that you can use with Windows XP retail installation on the computer.
charlie demerjian: Can you tell me if work is underway on this, it does not sound like it will ever happen.
charlie demerjian: The drivers on an XP CD are laughably old, to suggest that they will work on this machine is borderline ignorance.
charlie demerjian: I do realize you are reading from a script, but I would prefer a hard answer rather than a PR dodge.
charlie demerjian: No is an OK answer, I just need to know.
HP Employee: Charlie, I am not reading from any scripts. I am am giving you all the facts that I know.
HP Employee: Currently we do not have Windows XP driver for this computer. I am not aware of any releases for the Windows XP drivers for the computer
charlie demerjian: OK, that is what I need to know.
charlie demerjian: Thank you.
HP Employee: You are welcome.
charlie demerjian: That is it, I appreciate your help. Goodbye
HP Employee: If you wish I c an assist you in finding the correct drivers from the third party website.

So, two odd things stick out here. First, you are SOL if you want to get official drivers. On a machine with tech that predates Core Number Numeral, pretty stone age by modern standards, all of which have existing HP drivers for previous machines, they won't link XP drivers. In fact, they won't even point you to existing HP drivers, quite odd.

What is even more curious is that it will take the time and expense to walk you through finding the drivers on third party web sites rather than put a link up to the ones they already have. This is vastly more expensive and problematic for a company to do, so there must be a reason for doing that.

In the end, the customer gets screwed in the name of Microsoft foisting a half baked licensing nightmare on the unsuspecting. HP does its part to merrily make it damn near impossible to use anything other than MeII even if it costs money and customer satisfaction.

Microsoft must really be hurting if it need to force such terms on companies that once actually cared about their customers. It just goes to show how much you mean to these corporations once they have your cash. µ