Official Retard Question - Retail/OEM

[richieuk]

Whats the difference, seriously

[staffsMike]

On what? CPU? ..Warranty.

O/S? Right to use it on other machines or upgrade your machine.

[crazyfool]

oem is for system builders so an oem cpu doesn't come with a heatsink for example (hope i'm right lol), whereas retail would. An oem OS can only be installed once and is tied to the hardware of that computer (officially but there are ways around this lol) whereas a retail os can be reinstalled as many times as you like and in the case of windows comes with both the 64 bit and 32 bit versions

[richieuk]

ok, so what in respect of DVD-writers and such?

[staffsMike]

Good point yeah, oem cpu doesn't have a stock cooler.. just the chip.

DVD writers just come in a bag or brown box, no official software, no cables.. but you sometimes get nero etc..

£15 though.. it doesn't really matter does it

[Mithrandir]

Sometimes also Warranty. Such as AMD cpus OEM was 1 year and retail you get 3 years (if I remember correctly)

[LuckyNV]

ok, so what in respect of DVD-writers and such?

In general

OEM have no official packaging and ships with just the product in a plain box, usually no extras like cables or software. Sometimes reduced warranty too.

For example
CPUs
Retail - official box, little booklet/paper, heatsink and long warranty (3 years with Intel).
OEM - just the CPU, 1 year warranty with retailer.

For myself, I usually only go OEM on optical drives and hard drives.
Everything else I go for retail packages.

[Saracen]

Also, with some software products, OEM versions are designed to only work with the hardware they're supplied with .... and may therefore lack the generic support of Retail versions. That certainly used to be the case with Nero OEM, though I haven't checked for some years.

[Funkstar]

OEM have no official packaging and ships with just the product in a plain box, usually no extras like cables or software. Sometimes reduced warranty too.

Often they don't come in a box at all, same goes for hard drives.

They would be send to the likes of Scan in large multi-unit boxes (often packs of 24). Packs can be cardboard or polystyrene. Scan would then wrap then in copious amounts of bubblewrap and lots of their stupidly strong tape.

Scan re-use the outer box of these multi unit pack to ship orders in.

[Clunk]

An oem is a unit of electrickery.

[Infinite]

i think you mean ohm; a unit of resistrickery

[Clunk]

[Numenor]

Also, with some software products, OEM versions are designed to only work with the hardware they're supplied with .... and may therefore lack the generic support of Retail versions. That certainly used to be the case with Nero OEM, though I haven't checked for some years.

Indeed. I remember being quite annoyed when I updated the firmware on my OEM DVD drive to resolve some compatibility issues... only to find Nero would no longer work because it was tied to the firmware version!! Naturally I then had to go out and seek an economically viable replacement for the free software I was morally entitled to use but prevented from doing so. Hence my discovery of IMGBurn.