What does everyone thinks of this offer ?
http://www.compuplus.com/insidepage....n68&id=1000763
And what's the difference between the OEM version of XP Home vs what I could buy at the store ?

OEM version of XP does not come with support, or manuals.

My OEM copy of XP came with manuals and what would appear to be support. Just not a box.

I guess I'll pick up either the 80g or the 120g with OEM XP. That's the best deal I've seen so far for these new drives.

Wow!, I didn't know boxes were so expensive these days. I better keep all mine just in case I need some spare cash someday.

I guess that what's included will probably vary from place to place (normally, you'll get a cut down manual, not the full one). Typically, OEM products are for use by system builders and any support would be through them, and not directly with Microsoft (for winxp).

OEM basically comes with just the stuff you need an no extra crap.

If you've loaded Windows XP onto a system before, it's a no brainer.

I just might say that I warn you that when trying to install XP on a SATA drive you must make sure you've got your SATA drivers!

You have to go to a different menu for XP and it's pretty confusing... and I've loaded OS OVER 100's of times no doubt.

Good luck.

I'm quite certain that I loaded up the SATA drivers when I built up my p4p800 system. I'll doublecheck again. This is my 1st build and I know I'm being ambitious. I enabled IDE boot in the BIOS instead of SATA. Right now the new machine is running a small w2k 20g drive. I planned to install the SATA drive, Ghost the content over because I think it would be faster to keep all my running programs, enabled SATA boot, then install XP over w2k. Any problems with those steps ?

i wouldnt get it because of the one year warranty, typically a three year warranty means well made components; however, that is a good deal especially since its also got a 8MB cache.

Those Seagate drives currently have the best reliability in the industry, followed closely by IBM/Hitachi. This is according to user database @ storage review. The IBM/Hitachi 8MB Cache models come with 3 year warranty, but I imagine they will cost more. They are also considerably faster though not as silent.