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November 29 What's the difference between the retail and OEM editions of Vista?From a post I made on PCFormat's forum: Essentially, the box. But bear in mind, the vista box is quite cool, even if they did rip off the Nero 7 box... Anyway, there is a more subtle difference, that's the license and therefore, activation. The OEM license differs to the retail license in that the OEM software should only be sold with hardware. It's intended for companies like Dell that build complete computer systems for sale to ordinary consumers, OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer I believe. Companies like that don't have the time or need to be opening fancy boxes all day. And by pre-installing vista and forcing consumers to pay for it, they're keeping Microsoft as the market leader. So microsoft makes it cheap for them. Also, OEM software means that the Dell-like company is responsible for picking up the phone when the consumer claims their internets have been deleted by a virus from MSN, not Microsoft. You get no support from microsoft with OEM software. The retail version is intended for consumers. The fancy box is to make them want to buy it. The pretty manual is so they can install it easily. But it's expensive, because it's going direct to consumers. You also get support from microsoft - you pay for that too. But for what it's actually WORTH... So by buying the OEM edition, you're essentially saying: "I work in the industry, professionally building computers for others, I know what I'm doing and don't need you to convince me I want vista." Now, provided you know what you're doing, that's fine. The other, more important (to you) issue is activation. Vista will work for 30 days without activation, but then you have to activate or it will lock up, giving you access only to the internet for brief periods - to buy vista, since you're obviously a nasty pirate. Not a lost and frustrated customer. The first time you activate the OEM software, it will work. But if you have to reinstall, it won't. Makes no sense, I know. But microsoft really messed up the whole system. Fortunately, The Phone Method allows you activate it via microsoft's phone activation without any cracks or anything - but you can't use the automated phone system because that will fail. You have to talk to a customer service rep. Basically, Microsoft assumes that since that copy of vista has been activated before, it must have been installed on another computer. And that's not allowed under the terms of the OEM license. Of course, there's no law against you installing it twice on the same computer, in case it goes wrong for some reason. But Microsoft didn't think about that. So even if you do format and reinstall it, it won't activate. If you look out the window quick, you might catch a glimpse of your consumer rights as they float away. The retail license is different. As far as I know, you can activate it as many times as you like - Microsoft tried to limit it, but gave in to pressure. So I don't see why you couldn't install the retail copy on more than one computer, theoretically. Yes, I know - the whole reasoning behind activation, nonsense. It fails completely. But what can you do? So, it comes to whether you're going to be reinstalling it constantly.  |
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