InfoWorld's Ed Foster reports that as of April 1st:

   As an anti-piracy measure, Microsoft has quietly implemented a policy
   through which OEM hardware manufacturers who license Windows directly
   from Microsoft no longer ship a full backup CD of the OS with their
   systems. Instead, users receive one of two options for disaster
   recovery: a "recovery CD" that is locked into the type of system
   it's going to run on or a hard-drive-based approach where a "recovery
   image" of the OS can be loaded on a separate partition.

Glad they continue to innovate.

The full article is at:

   http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/05/01/000501opfoster.xml

--Glenn