[Dai]

Personally I'd forget about the manufacturers recovery system. What I do with a new machine is remove all the trial and unwanted software, add the core stuff you want (such as Office in your case) and once it's set up in running condition I use Acronis True Image to make a full copy of the disk to a backup drive.

If the need arises you can boot from the Acronis cd and restore the whole disk in 15 minutes. Alternatively you can renew the image every so often to create backups of your added personal files so it can be easily rolled back without major file losses.