Greetings --
There are some very important reasons that an OEM license costs so
much less than a retail license. OEM licenses are very limited:
1) OEM versions must be sold with a piece of hardware (normally
a motherboard or hard drive, if not an entire PC, although Microsoft
has greatly relaxed the hardware criteria for WinXP) and are
_permanently_ bound to the first PC on which they are installed. An
OEM license, once installed, is not legally transferable to another
computer under any circumstances. This is the main reason some people
avoid OEM versions; if the PC dies or is otherwise disposed of (even
stolen), you cannot re-use your OEM license on a new PC. The only
legitimate way to transfer the ownership of an installed OEM license
is to transfer ownership of the entire PC.
2) Microsoft provides no free support for OEM versions. If you
have any problems that require outside assistance, your only recourse
is to contact the manufacturer/builder of the PC or the vendor of the
OEM license. This would include such issues as lost a Product Key or
replacing damaged installation media. (Microsoft does make allowances
for those instances when you can prove that the OEM has gone out of
business.) This doesn't mean that you can't download patches and
service packs from Microsoft -- just no free telephone or email
support for problems with the OS.
3) Unlike a full version retail CD, an OEM CD cannot be used to
perform an upgrade of an earlier OS, as it was designed to be
installed _only_ upon an empty hard drive. It can still be used to
perform a repair installation (a.k.a. an in-place upgrade) of an
existing WinXP installation.
4) If the OEM CD was designed by a specific manufacturer, such as
eMachines, Sony, Dell, Gateway, etc., it will most likely only install
on the same brand/model of PC, as an additional anti-piracy feature.
Further, such CDs are often severely customized to contain only the
minimum of device drivers, and a lot of extra nonsense, that the
manufacturer feels necessary for the specific model of PC for which
the CD was designed. (To be honest, such CDs should _not_ be
available on the open market; but, if you're shopping someplace like
eBay, eastern European web sites, swap meets, or computer fairs,
there's often no telling what you're buying until it's too late.) The
"generic" OEM CDs, such as are manufactured by Microsoft and sold to
small systems builders, don't have this particular problem, though,
and are pretty much the same as their retail counterparts, apart from
the licensing, support, and upgrading restrictions.
Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH
