
@ Steven Hewitt
The EULA places restrictions on the OS's reuse on other hardware, resale, use in virtual machines without valid keys (fair enough). But it is the combination of this with Microsoft's phone-home activation that allows them to ENFORCE the terms of the EULA. I can't confidently buy a copy of Vista knowing that I'll be able to use it on the machine I'm typing this on, and on the one I buy in a couple of months, and on a machine I may buy next year, even if I only ever intend to have it on 1 system at any time. I certainly can't be confident that I can keep a backup VM containing content I create today dust it off in 20 years, fire it up and hope that MS still thinks I should be "allowed" to be running it any more.
The fundamental problem I have with all this stuff (and the discomfort started with XP's WGA), is that the ability of my machine to keep on doing what I want it to do, now and long in to the future should not rely on permission from some company across the sea. Microsoft will be around for a while yet, and admittedly their stuff generally works well. But it only takes a few cock-ups (like WGA mistaking some legitimate XP installs for illegal copies) to make me less than comfortable with the situation.
You admit you haven't yet experience protected HD content :) You admit to WPA p!$$ing you off - you at least have some sense of the limitations to your freedom - those are the bars of your battery hen cage. It may be roomy, predictable and comfortable for you, but its still a cage. Not for me.