Microsoft will certainly not erase someone's hard disk data - well, at least not intentionally
- and I really doubt they'll be much more strict than they are currently concerning SP1 and Windows Update.
Think about it; MS is the largest software company in the world - if they don't protect their software well enough, it's certainly not because they are not capable of it - they just don't want that to happen.
Microsoft'd rather have people using pirated Windows versions than any Linux variant, eh?
