Personally I don't like the idea of having to throw out a perfectly good OS just because the pc is junk! Plus, with MOST manufacturers, change a component that failed and you run the risk of not being able to re-install.

My sister had that problem. Her HDD died and her husband replaced it and now she can't re-install. That was learned AFTER she told them that she had to replace the HDD and needed the rescue disks. Since her husband didn't buy the exact same make, model and capacity drive it wasn't guaranteed to work. Then there is the guy that we bought our car from. His had a motherboard failure that took out his cpu as well. He bought a replacement that sisn;t come from the manufacturer. As soon as he installed it, it immediately said something about the copy of windows wasn't genuine or some such.

So, personally, I find a better value in a full version. Besides, what they call an OEM version is more of a "rescue" kind or thing. It's like using Norton Ghost every time you need to re-install. Sometimes you just want to start with the bare OS and go from there.