Angry

You can always sale to your better half for a penny.

I don't want to bog the thread down but it is a sore point with me.
I agree Dell are the good guys. But it's not about Dell, it is MS policy which allows them to distribute these disks.

It would be nice if MS reverted to their older policy of agreeing to the sale of OEM disks to owner builders.

@ theog
"You can always sale to your better half for a penny."
Yes but it is silly isn't it?
and the original install has be using the approved installation kit. Not subsequent installs.

mjf said:

I don't want to bog the thread down but it is a sore point with me.
I agree Dell are the good guys. But it's not about Dell, it is MS policy which allows them to distribute these disks.

It would be nice if MS reverted to their older policy of agreeing to the sale of OEM disks to owner builders.

I agree wholeheartedly. I've never done it, but it must be satisfying to build a computer the way you want it, and then seeing it run OK.

If Microsoft can give big discounts to students and the like, why not single-user OEM builders?

Thanks everyone for your responses. I know ranting here will get me nowhere, but it sure felt good! And yes OEM does keep the costs down and yes I should have been more diligent in my purchasing to actually ask these questions. I realize that it is not really Microsoft's problem, I just wish the woman on the phone could have been less cold about it. And it would also be nice if they had a program in place to upgrade laterally for lack of a better term. I would not mind purchasing an upgrade from Windows 7 professional to Windows 7 professional. If I got the right salesperson I'm sure it could be done. As for Dell, I did finally get a sales tech in India to send me their version of Windows 7. It's not an official pretty Windows version, but the next best OEM can offer. I will wait patiently for it's arrival.
Thanks again to all :)

By the way, to be clear, the motive here is simple. I am building a new system for my music/video studio and have purchased an 120gig SSD drive set RAID (AHPCI) for max file transfer speeds etc and want an unbloated, bare bones, system. I don't need Dell's dock or word or whatever. I had always in the past built my systems this way. Unfortunately for the manufacturers and developers my systems have tended to not dive into obsolescence too quickly...so in the time that I've been busy recording music the game has changed...and perhaps not for the better. Getting the OS disks is now an antiquated notion. Paying to send tech support and email is now normal. (I can understand live tech support but email?) Talking with someone that I can understand and they don't ask me to spell my name three times is a thing long gone. At least I get some humor in it all. After my Indian sales friend finished helping me, he told me that his manager would like to speak with me. He was and older man and I pictured him standing over Sanjin with a cattle prod.."Sell him something Sanjin!" It took so much restraint when he asked me if Sanjin did good not to reply "yes, but do you smell spiked coconut milk on his breath".....Come closer, closer Sanjin...closer.....bad salesboy!

Ok, two things. First, before I started building my own computers a few years ago, I had purchased a number of Dells. They ALWAYS same with an OS reistall disk. Not just the driver disk, and all the reinstall sw, but a seperate disk with the OS on it. I have used those diskd to reformat seveal times a while back. When did they stop doing this?

Secondly, Dell is a system builder. My understanding is that MS requires system builders to provide the end user with an OS reinstall disk. Is this not true?

--edit--

From the MS site:

"A full version of the Windows operating system is provided on a CD in the Microsoft System Builder Pack for each end user, and the CD must be transferred to the end user at the time of sale. "

Doesn't that mean that Dell is required to send a CD/DVD to the end user?

Don't get angry, get even with a perfect clean reinstall of the factory OEM license you own on that computer for life: Reinstalling Windows 7

As has been stated hundreds of times here manufacturers have stopped shipping clean copy OS installation DVD's in order to enforce their sponsor's bloatware which may provide all of the profit margin on some consumer boxes. Many will not tech support a clean reinstall although courts force them to honor the warranty. I simply don't tell them one has been done if they are needed for something, usually not except for hardware failure.

Until that happy day you can use these steps to Clean up factory bloatware

gregrocker said:

Don't get angry, get even with a perfect clean reinstall of the factory OEM license you own on that computer for life: Reinstalling Windows 7

As has been stated hundreds of times here manufacturers have stopped shipping clean copy OS installation DVD's in order to enforce their sponsor's bloatware which may provide all of the profit margin on some consumer boxes. Many will not tech support a clean reinstall although courts force them to honor the warranty. I simply don't tell them one has been done if they are needed for something, usually not except for hardware failure.

Until that happy day you can use these steps to Clean up factory bloatware

theog said:

The Dell DVD has the factory OEM-SLP activation method Product Key & Dell logo.

No bloatware on Dell install DVD's.

This is another case of a person not doing their homework BEFORE they purchased. It is the consumers responsibility to ask questions and gather information.

I know I am asking for too much, after all common sense and logic is not the abundant human commodity that it was just a couple of decades ago is it?