New Dell ships with no install disks

If you've made a bootable USB with Dell Backup and Recovery it should be all you need. If you want to procure media from Dell then go to:

www.dell.com/recoverymedia

Windows 10 TH2 works pretty well. XP should be laid to rest.

LOL, I'm sorry, what?  We use Win 8, Win 7 and Macs at work and they all work just fine.  In fact the Win 8 machines are much better at memory management and overall speed than Win 7 and have FAR less problems (no blue screens).

Thank you for responding Philip, although you're misguided about XP!

Regarding your answer

> If you've made a bootable USB with Dell Backup and Recovery it should be all you need.

assume I did a full restore from the backup on an external USB drive to either a replacement hard drive, or the original drive assuming it was infected or corrupted. So if I wiped the hard drive and restored as such, I'd be 100% back to where I was when I backed up? (And I assume you imply I'd actually be even better off than with original install disks, since I would get the benefit of all my changes since the original installation?)

Bonus question, anyone: I have Acronis 2016; what is the chief benefit of bothering with it instead of Dell B&R? (Besides, it sounds like Dell would send me B&R if I was stuck?) Thanks.

Thanks ieee, I apologize that I haven't gone into DB&R because I didn't want to go part-way into "First Launch Setup" since I'm waiting to obtain the external drive for backup. I assumed DB&R was for traditional backups, but it sounds like you can just back up the operating system and in worst case rebuild your hard drive from scratch, but on a full legal O.S., since you mention a USB stick. Then you consistently say that you do a more extensive backup with Clonezilla, so you can restore you a more "advanced or mature" state if I follow correctly. Okay, I'm clear. If you agree :)

psicioneal, I'm a financial user and former C and .ASM programmer. I.T. pros don't understand the horror to actual users from non-menu interfaces, and productivity is not a matter of the number of bits in CPU instructions or nearly any of the new capabilities MS introduces. It's the *interface* that MS perversely perverts on every new introduction, beginning with the insane ribbon in Office. When you can no longer go help/about in products, or in Win 8 even find a practical start menu, businesses suffer. An electrical engineer told me that designers should spend 2 years in the field before being certified. That would be a fantastic and wonderful requirement for I.T. people, whose perception of the real world and real productivity is obscured. LOL :)

"(until they do an XP style extortion, that is" What?  Although Windows XP will run on current hardware, although PATA v SATA disks may be an issue, to take advantage of the larger amounts of RAM currently en vogue, you would need Windows XP X64, which was generally available back then.

I am dating myself way back when in the dinosaur age of computers if you had a mainframe problem an you were more tan two versions old the OEMs would not talk to you 

You're right! Further, listening to I.T. pros, XP was responsible for the fall of the American empire, and thank God that the carnage ceased when Vista came out!

To your point, XP 32 is/was stuck under 4G, though FYI I and every other peer money manager that I know would accept that one thousand times over just to be able to run one crucial 32 bit app. I.T. pros think that awesome specs and capacities are all that matter (and rationalize about security, though it's a causal/noncausal fallacy, and a dishonest one at that) - I have been in I.T. or worked with them for over 30 years and that has never changed, though I am dating myself :) However, even though it never gets through to them, the world gets things done based on interface, not specs. Under 1/4 of 1% of CPU utilization generally is the rule. I'm not belittling people's passion for specs; I remember subscribing to High Fidelity and my first Marantz with under 1% THD and obsessing over peak vs. nominal. That's a little more esoteric than simply eliminating clipping and audible distortion though.

That said, I'm running 24G on W7. Since I'm bullyingly (obviously) forced off of XP, might as well. I understood that the 4 slots on the XPS only permit 32G total on this particular consumer-ish unit, though correct me if I'm mistaken.

Dinsosaur trivia, my first language as a kid was machine language, really, opcodes and operands. I graduated to .ASM during the 70s. Talk about capacity mattering!

Been there, done that.  Enter programs on B273 console/maintenance panel and UNIVAC CP901.  Wrote assembler for IBM 360+...+ and CDC Cyber series even some HP PA-RISC.  4 slots at 8GB/slot that is what the book says.  I have never found any use above 16GB of memory, even running when running Maya or Photoshop.  There aren't many 64 bit applications out there. The only class of applications the are real memory hog are databases i.e. SQL Server Standard and above Oracle 12c  and DB2 above Express-

>Dell hasn't been shipping recovery disks for years, neither does Microsoft.

n..4 supplied a cool seeming link above
www.dell.com/recoverymedia
entered just now; it redirected to
www.dell.com/.../media

which does state
"If your Dell device is under warranty, you can request a set of backup and recovery discs containing the factory-installed operating system as well as your device's drivers and utilities.

To submit your request for backup and recovery discs, enter your Service Tag below and click Continue. The Service Tag is the 7-character code usually found on the bottom or back of your device."

Are you referring something other than that?

-----
Dinosaur note: my first BASIC program was entered on a paper-roll "teletype terminal" connected to a college Univac. A remarkably interactive experience!

Cool stuff. Information packed post, thanks. Useful.

BTW, the biggest memory consumer as I look at this second is firefox, I have about 20 "instances" (estimated; status bar no longer reports the count. Shaking head...). That's taking a mere 1 G :) Distantly in second place at this second is Dropbox.

Dell hasn't been shipping recovery disks for years, neither does Microsoft. 

Me