What does oem REALLY mean..

[K6-Freak]

I know it means Original Equipment Manufacturer, but what the heck does that mean in layman's terms. What are the pros and cons of buying a product that is labeled oem?

I am thinking of buyin a 600 Mhz Athlon. Should I buy a boxed or OEM?

Someone enlighten me

[Dominus]

It means wholesale, basically. OEM products usually come without fancy packaging or extra software, and usually only a 30 day warranty.

They are usually slightly cheaper than retail products.

[wyvrn]

OEM sometimes means 1 yr warranty as opposed to 3 Retail, as in the case of some cpu's.

[welsh wizard]

Bear bone product, limited warrant, mainly for systems biulders, if you want the cheaper price without the fancy software/ boxes etc will save you some money, but can be a pain if it fails, but then again if it runs for a month it will normally run for a couple of years and it the computer world 2 years will mean it's worthless and due to be thrown out anyway, ( who bought a 486 a few years back when it was the bees knees, now if you have one still around its probably being used as a door stop.)
WW

[welsh wizard]

Forgot to mention,
if it's software thats OEM then it's illegal if it did not come with the computer system new,
You are not legal putting say windows 98 OEM onto a system you have that has say windows 95 on.
MS are getting very touchy over this happening at the moment and are planning to spend lots on tracing these illegal installations down.

WW