Anak:
Unfortunately, that's only Bott's opinion and, as he says, Microsoft has refrained from being definitive on the nuances.
MS has also supposedly said that RETAIL Win 7 licenses effectively become RETAIL 10 licenses when upgraded and would therefore NOT be "illegal" in the case of future hardware changes.
I said "supposedly". By that I mean again that MS has not been consistent and definitive on the nuances. All we get is opinion, assumption, and conjecture.
I think you'll find that its like it is now. You can pretty well swap anything you want except the motherboard. A CPU swap may trigger it, but it shouldn't be a big deal to reactivate by phone if that happens. Changing several items at the same time may trigger a reactivate prompt too, but same deal, just do a phone activation. I've swapped video cards etc on an OEM system builder Windows 7 desktop PC with no prompt to reactivate. CPU too with no issues.
Once you have your digital entitlement there is no need to make an image, other than for convince. You could just do a clean install latter on down the road and activate with the digital entitlement.
I've decided I'm not going to even risk it. All my Windows 7 licences are Retail so I could effectively upgrade them all and have a few Retail 10 licences.
However, I've seen no clear proof that you get a "like for like RETAIL upgrade", I can't find anything official on this. And I'm not prepared to give up any retail licences, especially when I don't have any intention of upgrading yet. While this is probably not the case and you should be able to go back to your old licence without issues, MS hasn't filled me with much confidence on this lately.
While I have no proof of this, I suspect this "Digital Entitlement" may only be tied to the hardware it's Activated on. I just can't see MS giving away loads of free upgrades and letting you transfer them to whatever you want. I do hope I'm wrong though.
If I do decide to upgrade in future. I'll just go out and buy a boxed retail version. Less hassle and I can do what I want with it then. I won't be putting 10 on any of my older systems so it's pointless me claiming a free upgrade on those anyway.
MS are still selling Retail boxed products though, so they should be transferable without issue. Unless they've changed the EULA for 10. That wouldn't surprise me either with their latest stunts.
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