To OEM or not?
23:28 Wednesday 28 Mar 07
This may appear dumb, but I don’t know.
I need to buy Windows XP. Amazon have XP Home SP2 OEM for £63 and they also have XP Home SP2 for £159. It doesn’t take a genius to work out my next question…… can I buy the OEM for use on the Mac ? If not, why not? I like the idea of a big saving and 63 quid isn’t so bad. A hundred more is.
(And if it’s OEM and intended for builders, can I do a reinstall on another machine?)
More: Mac mini
--
Read (977)
1
The biggest difference is in the EULA. An OEM is licensed on one machine, one set of hardware only. If you upgraded, or built a new machine, you would break the EULA to install the same copy of Windows on it, even if you removed it from the old one, whereas on the full version, you are allowed to upgrade. For your needs, go with the OEM!
11:55 Thursday 29 Mar 07
2
Thanks :)
I shall go about getting a copy.
12:30 Thursday 29 Mar 07
3
And even then, most of the time a quick call to Microsoft’s activation folks and a sob-story about “my motherboard had to be replaced” and a “no, its not currently installed on any other computers” will procure a ridiculously long string of numbers that will get your copy re-activated. There’s no reason in the world to not buy OEM.
14:38 Thursday 29 Mar 07