1heavyd Posted January 12, 2005 Share Posted January 12, 2005 I want to purchase a 80 Gb hard drive for my desktop PC from newegg.com. The one I would like to have says OEM only under packaging. What does OEM stand for.I was looking at an identical hard drive except under packaging it said "retail". The difference in cost was about 30 dollars. What is the reason for that. I know it doesn't cost $30 for packaging. Please inform this dumb a...ss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zxian Posted January 12, 2005 Share Posted January 12, 2005 It's not necessarily a dumb question...Google is your friend... GoogledOEM = Original Equipment ManufacturerCheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mecnet Posted January 20, 2005 Share Posted January 20, 2005 The "retail" products include cables,software Etc...The "OEM" Products usually just include the hardware only.In your case it's most likely a bare drive in a box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IcemanND Posted January 20, 2005 Share Posted January 20, 2005 and depending upon manufacturer the warranties may be different between OEM and Retail. Anywhere from 90 days to 5 years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeMSFN Posted January 20, 2005 Share Posted January 20, 2005 I had a client who had a Gateway (back when they had "retail" stores).The hard drive was a brand name (Maxtor, Western Digital... I forget which brand, but it was something like that). It was an "OEM" hard drive. The HD manufactuer said to get it exchanged/repaired through the PC manufacturer. That's fine and all except I had already put a new HD in thier computer, installed windows and returned it to the client.So I took the drive to Gateway and they said they needed the computer it came in originally!!!!! I asked why and they said to verify it's defective. My comment that they have a "tech room" and they should have spare computers to verify it in didin't go very far with them. Well I'm not going back to my client just to get a computer to exchange a HD. I'm not out money and they didn't care since they got the computer back quick. So my point is WATCH OUT for OEM drives! You might not be able to exchange it at all if it's defective.As far as anything else, yes IcemanND is correct. You may get a longer warrantee with retail, or the warrantee may be only exchangeable with the distributor (OEM) vs the manufacturer (retail). So consider carefully grasshopper. Read your fine print and ask many questions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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