I don't mind the system checking to see that I have paid for my operating system. But I will be extremely annoyed if I have to go fish out the Windows installation CD every time I update, the way they make you do with MS Office.
Also, what will this do to their highly vaunted automatic updates? If they can do this seamlessly, fine. If you have to jump through hoops every time you update, a lot of people will be angry, including me.
Have you ever had to reinstall a M$ product? You get two installs, after that, you have to call Microsoft and explain to them why you are re-installing the software and beg their permission so that they will give you a new key.
I had FrontPage installed on two machines, both of which lost their hard drives in the same year, after that I upgraded both machines. That meant four phone calls to Microsoft, each time having to answer a series of questions from a suspicious customer services rep about why I need to keep installing MY software that I PAID FOR!!!
Apple just came out with a new iWorks package containing a word processor and presentation package. I might finally be able to dump the last of my Microsoft software now.
My understanding is once you are verified, you are verified.
Hopefully they will run it like RHN, give you an enitilement for a license...