there aint much of the M$ software and OS's which is actually an original M$ idea! - even dating back to the so called "original" MSDOS [ this was originally called QDOS - Quick and Dirty OS, a product reverse-engineered from the CP/M OS ! ... ]
... but today don't tread on the toes of M$ - or suffer the wrath of the wanna-be gods of software ...

registrations of M$ products still don't work properly - My Toshi Laptop running a Toshi. labeled Win XP, crashed during a forced OS update - and after uninstalling the updates to a stage the computer would re-start, I was then confronted with that "please validate this product" - window which was counting down from 10 days. But after restarting the computer only once - the countdown window suddenly shows expired - you must validate this copy of the XP OS ...
I ended up contacting the M$ help line and had to talk to several of their techs for a period of literally hours - with "try this code" ... that didn't work, well try this code etc., and many times them asking " are you sure this OS has not been used before - ?? " and me having to re-explain yes of course - on this computer which just crashed because of a bad update " ... ok then, try this code ... I eventually got a validation code which re-activated the OS [and of course wrote it down for future reference ... ].
I have also seen a similar problem after a client only updated their video driver and the timer window locked them out ...
.. and how many genuine registered versions of XP are still coming up with that "Invalid WGA ! - this is a pirated windows OS! " window ???

Certainly M$ should drastically reduce the cost of purchasing all of their products ... who can condone spending $1,000 just for the "Bill Gates ultimate version!" of an OS ?!?! which does nothing different to the standard over priced version anyway ...

I certainly don't condone theft [I'm actually in a retail environment and have to encounter these problems daily ... ] ...
... but, try to find a computer user who has not "borrowed" some sort of software ... including the chiefs at M$ aren't innocent !!!