Microsoft OEM Products

I have a new customer who was pretty shocked today when I informed them that much of the OEM software that they had recently purchased is effectively worthless under the OEM license agreement.

They have spent a reasonable amount of money, effectively for nothing and though it is their responsibility to investigate the licence agreements, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. I really think that the resellers should attach very loud and clear warnings as to the nature of the OEM licensed products.

Can Microsoft lean on trusted resellers to make OEM software more difficult to purchase?  Or at least pressure them into making sure the end user really knows what they are getting?

Paulie,

I am not quite sure what you mean by worthless ? We supply a lot of new server and workstation hardware, all with OEM licences (Windows & Office), and our customers get good value from that software in terms of using it for the life of the hardware.

We explain the limitations of OEM software to our customers, but given the replacement cycle of three to four years on average, they are happy with those limitations as they would generally be upgrading software versions when upgrading their hardware and therefore the considerably lower price of the OEM software makes good business sense.

Making OEM software more difficult to purchase is a nonsense, OEM licences have a valid place in the market alongside FPP and Open / Select Licencing.

What would make better sense is replacing the riduculous acronym of OEM with something more end-user friendly and putting in place a sensible education campaign - rather than posters with cactuses (cacti ?) which are almost a stupid as the Dinosaur ads for Office.

Ultimately businesses need to take responsibility for their purchases and know what they are buying. Most business wouldn't buy a company car, or equipment for their workshop without doing the research and knowing what they are getting, but when it comes to IT they generally abdicate this responsibility. As a reseller we can help to inform our client but ultimately it comes down to caveat emptor !

Damian

If you buy desktop PCs, they MUST ship with OEM Windows.  If they want to get Volume License benefits, then this can be enrolled within 90 days (normally, but there was a special offer to extent to 180 days) into Open.

I'd like to understand what makes OEM useless for your customers?

David

Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly enough :)

This is a new customer to me and they have recently purchased a number of Office 2003 professional and Windows XP OEM from a trusted online store, before they engaged with me.

Now, they did not buy PCs or any hardware in most cases so the licenses are not valid as far as I understand it.  This generally is not made 100% clear to the end user at the time of purchase.

Even dabs.com lists the old agreement:

http://www.dabs.com/ContentTopic.aspx?ContentType=learnmore&ArticleID=486

As I understand it the OEM agreement changed on 1st September 2005 whereby buying a piece of hardware such as a hard disk or CPU along with your purchase of OEM software would not make an environment where the license would be considered valid and it must be a "fully assembled pc".

It does not take long to find products on many stores that don’t have ANY mention of the requirements.  I am saying that it should be mandatory for online resellers to show the rules of the OEM license agreement at the time of purchase.

Thoughts?  (and please do correct me if I am mistaken!)

Paulie