On 6/29/2014 9:41 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| I since was successful in contacting support for chat. I had to
| provide my phone number which is something I don't like to do. I agreed
| to allow agent to have control of the system and he was successful in
| activation. I would have preferred another alternative like having it
| work from the start but...........
|
| Thanks for you reply.
|

And thanks for getting back with the details. That's
a bit worrisome. It sounds like MS may be trying to
make things difficult.

| Also, are you telling me that I can only use identical board with
| retail that I built from scratch? I can't transfer to another computer
| if this one dies completely?

I should have been more clear. OEM refers to premade
computers, but it also refers to the license. If you go
to someplace like buycheapsoftware.com you'll find that
there are different options. It's confusing because MS
tends to say "Full" and "OEM", while advertisers will say
things like "full oem". Fiull OEM is OEM.

The full version license allows for serial install on any
number of machines, as long as it's one at a time. The
OEM license is a creative invention on Microsoft's part.
They claim it's licensed to the motherboard. OEM version
usually costs about $100 less than full. There have been
fights over whether OEM is legal for do-it-yourselfers to
use. I don't remember where it stands at this point, but
you can buy OEM and the dealers ship a small piece of
hardware with the disk, to satisfy the license.

Some people say one can talk them into activating
OEM on a new box. Maybe so. I don't know. But it's
not licensed for that. So if you buy an OEM version
and try to install it to another computer with different
hardware it will likely fail to activate. It's a gamble. You
can save $100 and take a chance, or pay a lot more
and risk that you'll never need to reinstall.


That was my understanding about OEM and why I decided to purchase
retail. I have never been know to be successful at saving $100. I rather
be free to do what I like at almost any cost.
I do have a laptop that must have OEM installed. I'm not into building
them yet. I enjoy the freedom of putting a desktop inside an aquarium if
I like. I could and have spend a lot of time looking at all the ways
some have them installed.