I owe Dell an apology. It seems they do provide a "free" way to get a backup cd. There's a program that you can run to create and burn a recovery cd. It's too bad this program isn't automatically installed on your laptop. You can install it using the system backup cd. But what if you didn't pay the extra money for the sytem backup cd you ask. Then you're s.o.l. I really hate Dell.
But that's okay. Clay will be singing live to mEEEEEEE!!! soon so who cares.