Installing Lion 10.7.1 or later on a new hard drive

I just bought a new Macbook Pro 17". Guess what??? No installation disks. Only a "recovery" app. How would one go about installing Lion 10.7.1 or later on a new hard drive without a local copy of the system?
I just talked with Support. Apparently, Apple expects you to download the entire system from their computers if you want to install Lion 10.7.1 or higher onto a new drive. The person I spoke with said that you would boot up on a USB drive and then the software would download the system at that time. The problem is, it is a 7 GB download.
I don't know about you but I don't have time to wait 3 days for a download to finish. I say 3 days because I was just downloading a recovery software update (500 MB in size) and Apple's servers were sending it at 60 Kbps per second. My math tells me at that rate a 7 GB download will take somewhere around 32 hours. And that is assuming the download doesn't get interrupted and can recover if it does without starting over from the beginning.
Even if I could reasonably expect 500 Kbps on my connection speed, it will still take 4 hours (and I haven't seen Apple's systems ever run anywhere close to that speed).
Before someone mentions downloading the Lion upgrade software from Apple, be aware that this computer came with Lion 10.7.2. There is no upgrade. And according to Apple, Lion 10.7.1 and later will never have any system disks.
I don't mind the download if I can do it NOW and not when I am in the middle of installing the system.
So I ask again: How would one go about installing Lion 10.7.1 or later on a new hard drive without a local copy of the system? Does Apple seriously expect you to download the entire system at the time you are installing the system?????
There has to be a way around this debacle.

So the question remains: How to install from a local copy?
There is no easy way.
If your Mac came with Lion preinstalled, your options are:
1. Make a bootable clone immediately (before adding any apps or other files). Keep that for emergency purposes.
2. Make a second bootable clone whenever there are major changes (and with all your apps and files installed).
3. Purchase the USB stick from Apple for $69.
4. You cannot purchase or download Lion from MAS (except with/through your internet recovery option) because you did not purchase Lion there in the first place (unless you were to completely erase your hard drive and then purchase/download Lion from MAS and then copy/save the installer to a safe place).
shldr2thewheel:
discs are becomming a thing of the past
I don't believe that is going to happen quite as quickly as Apple hopes it will.
P.S. I give up on the formatting - three tries: your name shows up fine in the reply window and then gets messed up......

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Use the trackpad to scroll, thats what it was designed for. The scroll bars automatically disappear when not being used and will appear if you scroll up or down using the trackpad.
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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
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Installing Lion 10.7.1 or later on a new hard drive

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