It was unavoidable, Rita, but you've bought yourself a problem in the sense that rather than a disk, Apple has given you a recovery partition that works via the Internet, i.e. if you need to reinstall, you've either got to download, which, with your capped bandwidth is not particularly feasible, or either maintain a more or less current backup, not necessarily Time Machine, or buy a $69 Lion thumb drive.
grelber may be in a worse position than you're in, because he's behind a 56k modem, and the download would take him 9 1/2 days to complete. If my memory serves me, he discussed the issue with Apple and was told that they could maybe arrange a free thumb drive for him. I think he dropped the matter, but I'd love to see someone push them on it, because, in short, Apple has disenfranchised that portion of the world that does not have easy/inexpensive access to broadband (and it's only going to get worse). (Edit: Apple's "user-friendly" suggestion is that you take your Mac either to a friend or relative's home or to work if you don't have broadband at home.)
As for traditional Archive & Install, I don't think that can be done any longer...you can only reinstall the most current version of OS X.
Edit 2: By the way, you ought to run Software Update, because your Safari, at the least, is out of date. (I've got v 5.1.7.)
Edit 3: Your recovery partition perpetuates much of your old install disc's functionality and also adds some new stuff.
Last edited by artie505; 07/21/12 11:42 PM.
