OEM

[Mil]

What is OEM ? And why are OEM products cheaper in price ?
Just curious,
thanks,
Mil

[Rick]

OEM are products sold to dealers for use in assembling complete systems.
These items come without documentation or the little extras found in the retail packages.
They are also sold in bulk (lots of 100-1000)

In a few cases they also have a lesser warranty. 30days as apposed to 1 year.

I use a lot of OEM products . Hard drive and CPU’s mostly also a few video cards
I don’t need or want to pay for the little extras included with most of the retail products in these units.

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

[Steve]

Hi Mil,

OEM. Original Equipment Manufacturer.

And what Rick said. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

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Peace and Love, brothers and sisters. Peace and Love

[Whyzman]

There are also potential advantages and disadvantages beyond the warranties. In exchange for the discounted OEM pricing, the assembler of the systems also picks up the tech-support liability...and any additional warranty on their own...if they are still around in a year. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

If you purchase Retail...even from such places as THIS (http://www.pricewatch.com) there are still pretty good deals to be had...with the up-side that if you encounter a problem you have access to the manufacturer's Tech-support either via phone or email. I have found it personally helpful, of course before I knew about the PC Guide Forum, to have direct access to Tech-Support. Most were keenly aware of field problems and solutions involving their hardware.

I would definitely weigh the pros and cons when assembling yourself or adding on. IMHO http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

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May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

[This message has been edited by Whyzman (edited 11-07-2001).]

[kenja]

A few OEM "gotchas": The OEM product may not be exactly the same as the retail model. A while ago, a certain hard drive manufacturer's retail offering had a 2MB cache, while the OEM had only 512KB. (StorageReview.com found no difference in performance, as I recall.)

Firmware and driver updates may not apply to the OEM version of a component.
OEM video cards don't include a game-pack CD (fine with me http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif ).
Hard drives don't include cables nor installation software (but it can be downloaded).

Support may be hard to find, especially for an OEM motherboard that was custom made for a computer manufacturer.

OEM processors usually have a 30 day warranty from the place you bought it from. Retail box CPUs include a heatsink/fan and usually come with a three year warranty from the manufacturer.

That said, I've bought gobs of OEM stuff over the last couple of years.

[This message has been edited by kenja (edited 11-08-2001).]