OEM Drive Has Better Warranty Than Retail
Hey Fred, Love the newsletter. I just bought two new hard drives. They are 250GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 PATA 133MB 16M cache. I plan to install them in a RAID configuration.
The reason I am writing is to ask if you are aware that OEM drives, from Maxtor, have a longer warranty. That drive is available from a big chain of stores in its retail form (box, CD, cable, etc.) and has a warranty of 1 year. The same drive, in its OEM form, has a warranty of three years and can be bought from just about any computer shop. It is also cheaper.. I just can't understand why! Keep up the great work. You make your readers look amazing... Ciao. ---Serge Desaulniers
That an OEM drive has a longer warranty than an
ostensibly identical retail one is indeed unusual, although not unheard of.
Usually OEM components are cheaper (as yours was), but that better price is
accompanied by reduced support (such as warranty support).
On the TigerDirect Web site and the sites of other major legitimate component
online stores, your "OEM" drive is available with a 36-month warranty and tech
support supplied by Maxtor. It's all quite above board and legitimate. But OEM
component purchase stories don't always have a happy ending.
OEM are the initials for "original equipment manufacturer." The term has been
around for a long time, and is used differently in various industries. The way
it's used in the PC industry is a bit of a misnomer. Usually, a PC company---
Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.--- is called an "OEM"--- even if it merely assembles
hard drives, DVD and CD drives, motherboards, fans, video cards, monitors,
keyboards, cabling and other parts and peripherals manufactured by other
companies.
Parts and components built and packaged for sale to these OEMs are usually
slightly different from those sold at retail stores. They may come without
cabling, for example, or screws, software and, usually, warranty.
OEM hard drives are sold under varying degrees of legitimacy, from totally
illegal to vaguely shady to fully approved and legitimate. Sometimes sellers
hide the fact that a component is an OEM part, but sell it without packaging
(called a "bare drive")--- and others highlight the drive's OEM status as a mark
of value.
OEM drives may be sold by the drive manufacturer, by an OEM, by a reseller or
VAR, or--- most likely--- by none of the above, such as an online store that
sells directly to users.
In some cases, an OEM drive comes with zero support from the vendor. No
firmware, no software, no service, no promise to fix if broken--- you may even
not be able to take advantage of future firmware upgrades. Sometimes, the
missing firmware is actually required in order to take advantage of the drive's
full potential performance or feature set.
The Maxtor drive in question, however, represents a growing trend. Component
makers nowadays increasingly split specific product lines into three major
channels: Retail, OEM and pseudo-OEM. Your drive is the latter. A pseudo-OEM
drive uses the OEM label as a marketing gimmick, and often small tweaks in
packaging, parts, warranty and other attributes, to sell online. In reality,
it's a retail product never intended for the OEM or reseller channels.
Buying this "OEM" drive from a reputable seller will probably end up being a
good deal. In general, however, it's a good idea to buy components--- whether
labeled OEM or not--- from reputable sellers, and with support and warranties
supplied directly from the manufacturer.
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