Vista OEM vs Vista Retail
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Scenario:
Customer: How much does a Vista Ultimate Retail version cost?
Salesman: Do you know it costs a lot?
Customer: Yes, I do.
Salesman: Then why still want?
Customer: Flexibility and better support. Free 90 days support, no worries over licensing issues.
Salesman: It's the same.
Customer:
The salesman is right, but the customer is right as well... between OEM Ultimate and Retail Ultimate, there's no difference basically, in terms of functionality or whatsoever.
One wonders why if there's no difference, why the big price difference?
Bear in mind, a retail version costs nearly 2X more than an OEM version.
The answer lies in licensing and support. Licensing wise, a full retail version allows you to transfer the license from one to another without having MS bugging you that your license is invalid.
For OEM, that's not the case. If you attempt such a stunt, MS will declare it as invalid (simply put, pirated, regardless of whether you paid for it).
In terms of support, a full retail version has better support. You get free support from MS for 90 days. For OEM, there's no such thing, because OEM means Original Equipment Manufacturer. Whoever produced that machine, you call him/her and ask him/her to fix.
But if you build yourself, you call yourself???!!!
Yes, that's right.Another option, is of course, pay and get it fixed. Business for me. $100 per day. Maybe should change it to per hour and part thereof. 1 hour and 5 minutes = $200. Easy money.
Anyway, enough of my nonsense over money... there's one important issue to take note when buying MS stuffs. MS doesn't charge extra for nothing over the same product. There's always some extras somewhere or legal issues that results in the extra charges...
Don't be taken in by these salespeople... you will cry when you bang into MS walls.
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Oh... and another thing.
You get pretty box and manuals too (OK... I don't think anyone would care for these stuffs since they are essentially useless).
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Im using the vista OEM
but if i reformat also no problem right? wont tell me mine is not genuine hor?
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No problems. The only problem using the same installation on another PC. It's not possible with Vista OEM (at least, not without MS screaming at you), but possible with retail Vista.