Gordon said:
I thought the MAIN reason they cost less is that MS does not provide any
support?
No, that's only one of the reasons, and probably the least significant
one, at that.
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 non-peripheral
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 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) 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 of PC, as an additional anti-piracy feature. Further,
such CDs are 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 on-line like eBay, 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:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin
