there is a term in OZ it is "Rip Off" And Aussies Hate a "Rip Off" or to be "Ripped off" IF MAny were to find that what they had paid for was not 100% they would want the "Rip off Merchant"to be caught by the short and curly, or at the very least to visit them with a 4x2 hardwood and manually reprogram their honesty chips (ie smash their teeth in)

I would suspect this sort of thing will be 80 to 90% effective in the normal consumer situation, but it will be ineffective where the people knowingly requested/installed the Hot OS,.

Are you building the OS from scratch or do you image with the authentication key blanked
I dont know about nihil, I dont build an OS. I use an OEM disk, install the OS, drivers, basic user applications and specilised user requested apps, install all updates then lock down the OS and apps.. hand the customer a box with ALL the OEM CD's including the OS install CD.

As for imaging.the Drive.. NO.. unless requested by the customer, and then It wont be activated
before Imaging. I havent checked with MS to see if this has changed, but as of 3 years ago ms did not want the system builder OEM's with out an existing OEM agreement to image an Activated OS.