Retail and OEM

Retail means you get a boxed product with drivers/appropriate parts e.g. for a CPU you will also get a heatsink and fan or a hard drive will come with cable and manual.

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer and you just get the bare part itself with no manuals, drivers or anything else.
 
I think it varies a bit, some OEM's come with manuals and drivers but no extras (for example an OEM soundcard will usually come with a driver disk, but the retail version comes in a nicer box and possibly with a game or extra bits).

The warranty also varies with OEM/Retail, often the retail version of say a CPU will have a 3 year warranty, whilst the OEM version only gets 1 year (and with hard drives it varies a lot more).
 
I think the distinction is most important with CPUs since a relatively inexperienced system-builder might opt for an OEM part, looking to save a few quid, only to have all the components arrive and find out there is no heatsink+fan to cool it (not a mistake I've ever made, honest!). :o
 
I purchased a pioneer dvd drive (OEM) and it was literally just a drive sealed in an antistatic bag with an instruction leaflet.

It obviously varies from product to product, so when buying OEM, make sure you have any extras such as cables/drivers, or be prepared to purchase/download them.

Just expect to get the bare item and nothing else, and you wont go far wrong.

edit, the WesternDigital 500gb hard drive I got was litterally just the drive in a sealed bag.
 
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