| Dell provide a Dell-branded OS recovery cd for whatever flavour of windows you purchased with the PC. It will only work on Dell PC's as it reads a checksum from the BIOS to determine its actually a Dell PC you are trying to reinstall it on. THe CD key for this is located on a sticker on the side\top of the PC case. Thats what u are paying for, the sticker, thats your licence.
I went the Dell factory in Limerick last year and they have these holgraphic licence key stickers on rolls, locked inside a strong-box...the production line scans the PC chassis on the line and then automatically dispenses the correct sticker for the operator - theres this person and her job is to stick the licence stickers on all day, every day!!
You also get a Drivers and Utilities CD from them, this has all the device drivers and such for your model, so you dont have to go to the net and download, if you're doing a re-build....
If you bought any other software as part of the deal, you should get a re-install CD, for example DVD-Player decoder like WinDVD.....  |