[NumberFiveAlive]

I also don't get the built in unreliability comment, either. Windows has been pretty darn stable since they went to the NT kernel. Really, all three main desktop OSs are pretty stable these days. I get a BSOD on Windows 7 maybe once every six months or so, and that's with ~8 hours a day in front of a windows box at work. I'd rate my OSX home box just slightly less stable than that, but when you're talking about such infrequent crashes, who really cares? These aren't the halcyon days of Windows 95/OS 7 with half a dozen lockups a day.

[SecurityMatters]

I was talking about reliability, not stability. The activation Windows has used for a while makes the product unreliable. This may not be obvious at first. I had a client with a computer problem, which ended up needing some replacement hardware. The computer needed reactivation, and the owner asked me what assurance she had that it could be activated in another 3 years when some other part died. The computer was running a very expensive piece of vertical industry software that only ran on one version of Windows. I read everything I could find and talked to several senior Microsoft engineers. The answer is that nothing assures that I'll be able to activate Windows to keep a business critical process running. I get vague statements that the engineers can't see why Microsoft would stop the activations, but nothing I can tell someone to bet their business on. I can understand why most people don't see this problem. I did not see it, until prompted by a customer.

[NumberFiveAlive]

Ok, yeah, I've run into that before, and it is a pain. But I've heard that if you call Microsoft they'll always reactivate a license in that situation.