I currently have this problem with a Windows 7 machine I bought from eBay. I can't activate it and I have a black desktop (sorta annoying) and two or three different things that pop up periodically to yell at me (incredibly annoyingly, especially the one that makes an obnoxious error noise). This situation is definitely my fault - there are a few possibilities for where I went wrong:
1) maybe the guy I bought it from was not legit - I asked him lots of questions before going through with the purchase but that's about as much as I could (or would be willing to) do,
2) Using what I believed to be the correct, legal process, I created an install disk and looked up the key for my existing OEM install, which I used to reinstall a fresh instance without any of the HP nonsense the machine came with,
3) For a couple days I had an install using the same key on a VM to test something with IE9.
Any one of those things could be the problem and they were decisions I made, Microsoft didn't force or manipulate me. But here's the thing, at the end of the day what I have is a really obnoxious machine and if I had just bought a Mac (off of eBay even!) or installed Linux instead, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. You're right that the Microsoft experience isn't so bad, if you follow the rules you're probably going to have a bare minimum of hassle, but it is still so much worse than the competition on this front.
1) maybe the guy I bought it from was not legit - I asked him lots of questions before going through with the purchase but that's about as much as I could (or would be willing to) do,
2) Using what I believed to be the correct, legal process, I created an install disk and looked up the key for my existing OEM install, which I used to reinstall a fresh instance without any of the HP nonsense the machine came with,
3) For a couple days I had an install using the same key on a VM to test something with IE9.
Any one of those things could be the problem and they were decisions I made, Microsoft didn't force or manipulate me. But here's the thing, at the end of the day what I have is a really obnoxious machine and if I had just bought a Mac (off of eBay even!) or installed Linux instead, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. You're right that the Microsoft experience isn't so bad, if you follow the rules you're probably going to have a bare minimum of hassle, but it is still so much worse than the competition on this front.