OEM XP or Retail? Please help.

[mercury_in_flames]

From what I can understand with OEM the licence is for 1 computer only, you cant transfer to another computer if you are upgrading. The second is that you dont get support from MS without paying money to them.

Can someone tell me what this 'support' actually means and will I need it?? I mean I don;t think I'll have any problems installing XP, and in two years of using a computer ive never had to contact microsoft for support. If my computer crashes its normally fine after restarting etc. Should I bother with Retail XP??

Also, I am getting am building a pretty good computer, and don;t really want to have to upgrade for at least another three to four years (dual core etc) but from what I can see, XP proffessional is good if you are going to have the computer on a network, which I wont, theres greater security (i have norton, adaware etc on my comp so what more 'security' do i need??) and supports dual processors and hyperthreading. My AMD 3500 says with 'hyper transport technology' whatever that means.

So can someone tell me please, OEM or Retail, Home or Pro? atrain, dex???

[bobt]

Hi Greg,

I've got XP-Pro on my IBM 1.5 GHZ, 512 MB etc etc, no service packs, marginal support from ososoft, for what you need the media edition may be what you want. Personally if I was rebuilding I would large hard drive or two, and run windoze on one, and Linux on the other. Did have a seperate hard drive with Suse Linux 8.1 until the hard drive died, worked quite well, recognized my 707, never had a chance to try it with the NH1, but I think with VMware SS could be made to work.

Unfortunately for most applications you need some sort of windoze installed, XP=Pro works for me with it's extra features, but I'm intrigued by the media edition.

Good luck,

Bob

[mercury_in_flames]

Naa unless you actually want your comp in the living room i wouldnt bother with media centre edition. I've gone for the OEM XP pro. Ive never had to contact microsoft for support in the last three years and don;t plan to start now.

[atrain]

OEM. all the way.

[KrazyIvan]

Keep in mind that M$ may change the rules on OEM versions. If you even upgrade your processor or motherboard while using OEM XP you may be required to purchase another copy. It is not that way now but it may change.

[pata2001]

From what I can understand with OEM the licence is for 1 computer only, you cant transfer to another computer if you are upgrading.

Yes, that is correct. If you plan to keep the PC (I have a Celeron 1GHz PC that is still useful for internet and bittorrent ), then go OEM to save some money. If you will ditch the PC, then it's better to buy retail than wasting that OEM copy. If you have an old win95/98/ME CD (winNT/2k for pro), you can get winXP home/pro upgrade retail. OEM version used to be much cheaper, even compared to the upgrade version, but that's not the case anymore (Eg. WinXP home, OEM: ~US$90, upgrade retail: US$99, retail: US$199).

Oh, and consider if you actually need winXP pro. If you cannot think any differences between pro and home, then just get the home version, which is cheaper. I have 3 PCs with winXP home, and no problems whatsoever. I have seen people using XP pro just because of the name "pro," they only use it for internet/gaming. Of course, 99% of those people use a pirated version...

Edited May 24, 2006 by pata2001

[mercury_in_flames]

does XP home support 4gb ram like XP pro does?