From: "Frank Haber" 

>The price difference between XP Pro and a computer which has XP Pro installed
>is so small that buying XP Pro retail to install on an existing older machine
>is absurd.

Contra:

1) The OEM installs of XP for boxen from Dell, Compaq, et. al. have no
individual license key, are keyed to that mfr's BIOSes, and won't install
on another brand (or on generic).

2) You frequently get no CD with one meatball, only a restore-and-nuke
"restore partition."  A few years ago, you got just a
nuke-install CD, again keyed to the BIOS.

3. Technically, generic OEM CD installs of XP (to a white box) are not
transferable.  MS is usually merciful in the case of machine failure,
but.... And they're getting feisty with small builders lately.  MS holds
the VAR's eldest hostage, etc., and will expose same on the hillside if the
VAR cheats. You can see the bones on many WA hillsides.  Just joking.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5