Does Apple ever ship machines w/o startup disks?
Alan Munn
corporate and/or educational purchases.
Does Apple have a program whereby machines are ever shipped without
their original install DVDs?
I've been told that this is the case, but I have never heard of such a
program in all my years of buying Macs at major US universities.
If anyone can point me to information about such a program I'd
appreciate it. Of course it's hard to prove a negative, but if you're
in a position to know if such a program doesn't exist, that would be
great.
Comments about whether such a program would make sense etc. (IMO it
wouldn't) are not relevant to the conversation.
Thanks
Alan
JF Mezei
> Hi, this is a question for anyone who has experience with large volume
> corporate and/or educational purchases.
>
> Does Apple have a program whereby machines are ever shipped without
> their original install DVDs?
If you are large enough to talk to Apple corporate sales, I suspect
that they would consider such a request. They are already geared to
handle custom orders, so skipping the disk imaging and not including the
DVD would be within the realm of the possible.
Alan Munn
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
Thanks. I'm sure it's in the realm of the possible. I'm trying to find
out if it's in the realm of the actual.
Alan
Alan Munn
Michelle Steiner <mich...@michelle.org> wrote:
> In article <amunn-88513E....@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Alan Munn <am...@msu.edu> wrote:
>
> > > If you are large enough to talk to Apple corporate sales, I suspect
> > > that they would consider such a request. They are already geared to
> > > handle custom orders, so skipping the disk imaging and not including
> > > the DVD would be within the realm of the possible.
> >
> > Thanks. I'm sure it's in the realm of the possible. I'm trying to find
> > out if it's in the realm of the actual.
>
> The best way to find out is to contact Apple directly.
Yes, that was in the works, but I thought I'd ask the wisdom of the
newsgroup to see if anyone knew.
As it turns out, Apple never ship machines without original restore
disks, no matter how large the customer.
Alan
Nitefall
We purchase MacBooks in bulk from Apple. We get cases of 5 machines.
In the case is _one_ set of documentation, and one set of boot/restore
media.
Alan Munn
Nitefall <nite...@mac.com> wrote:
So much for my information from Apple. Maybe the 'never' was in the
context of Higher Ed sales only?
Alan
JF Mezei
> So much for my information from Apple. Maybe the 'never' was in the
> context of Higher Ed sales only?
Large consumer oriented organisations such as Apple make it quite
difficult for new commercial customers to establish contacts with the
people who have the power to do "non standard stuff".
Consider that if you are some high profile research lab wanting to buy
1000 xserve machines, Apple will bend over backwards to customize them
to help you deploy the machines.
However, the question beckons: is there a reason why you want those
systems "bare" without a pre-installed OS ?
Apple has tools to "image" an OS unto a new machine. So it doesn't
matter if there is anything on the drive, when you image a new system on
it, it zaps previous contents.
Barry Margolin
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> However, the question beckons: is there a reason why you want those
> systems "bare" without a pre-installed OS ?
He never said he wanted them without a pre-installed OS. He just didn't
want lots of extraneous, duplicate install DVDs. If you're not going to
give each user their own install disks, you just need 2 or 3 sets in the
IT Dept.
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
David Empson
> In article <0025df60$0$28499$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>,
> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
> > However, the question beckons: is there a reason why you want those
> > systems "bare" without a pre-installed OS ?
>
> He never said he wanted them without a pre-installed OS. He just didn't
> want lots of extraneous, duplicate install DVDs. If you're not going to
> give each user their own install disks, you just need 2 or 3 sets in the
> IT Dept.
Except when the time comes to upgrade to new computers and you want to
sell the old ones.
If you don't have an official set of DVDs for every computer, most of
them will end up being sold without reinstallation media, which is not
good for the new owner.
Creating your own copies of them is dubious as far as the licence is
concerned, time consuming and requires relatively expensive dual-layer
media. Getting them after the fact from Apple is even more expensive
(and may not be possible if the computer is too old).
--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz
Alan Munn
Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article <0025df60$0$28499$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>,
> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>
> > However, the question beckons: is there a reason why you want those
> > systems "bare" without a pre-installed OS ?
>
> He never said he wanted them without a pre-installed OS. He just didn't
> want lots of extraneous, duplicate install DVDs. If you're not going to
> give each user their own install disks, you just need 2 or 3 sets in the
> IT Dept.
Actually, I never said either of these things. My original question was
whether Apple does ship machines this way. I've been told by our IT
person that he doesn't have startup disks to give to faculty with their
laptops. This has never happened before, and I frankly don't believe
it and am trying to get a definitive answer on whether this is a normal
practice for Apple or whether our particular IT person is just a control
freak. I prefer to have startup disks with machines I use, especially
laptops, and find it annoying that I need to buy a copy of the OS just
to have this ability. It's not a big deal, but more a matter of
principle. But I'd like to get my facts straight before I actually
start complaining.
Alan
JF Mezei
> whether Apple does ship machines this way. I've been told by our IT
> person that he doesn't have startup disks to give to faculty with their
> laptops. This has never happened before, and I frankly don't believe
> it and am trying to get a definitive answer on whether this is a normal
> practice for Apple or whether our particular IT person is just a control
> freak.
It would likely be the later. Perhaps the units were shipped with the
disks, but customized by IT and then distrinuted without the disks.
Paul Sture
dem...@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:
> Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > In article <0025df60$0$28499$c3e...@news.astraweb.com>,
> > JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> >
> > > However, the question beckons: is there a reason why you want those
> > > systems "bare" without a pre-installed OS ?
> >
> > He never said he wanted them without a pre-installed OS. He just didn't
> > want lots of extraneous, duplicate install DVDs. If you're not going to
> > give each user their own install disks, you just need 2 or 3 sets in the
> > IT Dept.
>
> Except when the time comes to upgrade to new computers and you want to
> sell the old ones.
>
> If you don't have an official set of DVDs for every computer, most of
> them will end up being sold without reinstallation media, which is not
> good for the new owner.
A good reason for the central staff to keep hold of them. If distributed
to each system's owner, a lot will get lost or go missing.
--
Paul Sture