All I'm interested in is the protection offered by an additional layer of card board. I don't care if that layer has an ASUS, Cheerios, or blank label. I could care less about anything else. For example, I also bought a miniPCI network card for an old laptop. It came in a plain box, with some bubble wrap, and an external antenna that I don't need. That's fine with me, because it doesn't appear that the guy at new egg just removed the card from his old laptop because he just go himself a new one.
<br><br>As long as my new drive works, I'm happy. All I'm saying is that opening the box to find a loose drive doesn't ADD to my confidence level that it will work. <br><br>My main point was that I would expect packaging like that from a vendor in eBay, not from Newegg.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/25/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Brian Wood</b> <<a href="mailto:beww@beww.org">beww@beww.org</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Yan Seiner wrote:<br>> Josh White wrote:<br>>> I'm not worried about the price point, I'm sure even at $36 I'm paying<br>>> 10x the manufacturing cost. What I am worried about was the fact that
<br>>> the outer layer of packaging was a cardboard box, then a layer of foam<br>>> peanuts, then bubble wrap, then a plasitc bag, and then the drive<br>>> itself. No asus box, nothing. No manual, wires, registration card,
<br>>> anything. All I got was a box that they threw some basic packaging<br>>> materials in and a drive. Like it was just pulled out of a system they<br>>> had lying around. I guess that's probably better packaging than dell
<br>>> receives at their assembly plants, but still. Not what I'm used to.<br>><br>> OEM v. retail - the OEM stuff is bulk-packed, with little to no stuff -<br>> maybe a CD. Retail comes in a nice box with stuff.
<br>><br>> You pay more for retail packages. Do you really need the package? :-)<br><br>One other difference between retail and OEM that is unique to DVD drives:<br><br>The retail versions come with some sort of software to play commercial
<br>(ie: CSS protected) disks. That software is licensed to do this.<br><br>Without such a license you are technically in questionable territory if<br>you play a DVD, and even more so if it's CSS "protected".
<br><br>An OEM bare DVD drive is sold on the assumption that the system<br>integrator will be providing licensed software to play protected DVDs,<br>as well as (perhaps) a licensed MPEG2 decoder. The retail drive makes no
<br>such assumption.<br><br>These issues are not usually of interest to Linux users, as there is no<br>"legal" way to play a CSS disk under that OS that I'm aware of (in the<br>USA that is). There have been one or two attempts to create licensed
<br>Linux DVD software, they all seem to fade away for some strange reason.<br><br>I've been told that the combined license fees for a commercial<br>standalone DVD player, including the rights to use the various logos
<br>(DVD, CD-ROM,"Digital Audio" MPEG, MP3 et al) come close to $20 these<br>days. Even the stripped down versions of player software that ship with<br>retail drives must cost something, though perhaps not as they are often
<br>used as marketing tools to try and sell the upgraded versions.<br><br>But in any case, no matter how it's packaged, all I care about is:<br><br>Does it work?<br><br>If it doesn't, does the vendor back it up?<br>
<br>I'll always pay a little more to buy from a vendor I know or who has a<br>solid reputation.<br><br>beww<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">
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