Never once had the same problem as you. Actually this is the first I hear of anyone using the offline activation methods. Yeah 54 digit codes suck. But 54 digits ain't 100 digits. And it would not justify, for me, going pirate. Unless you're sitting there installing stuff all day long every day.
Same here. I've installed Windows a bajillion times over the past 15ish years and never run into this kind of problem. I don't reinstall Windows, since (for me) apps cleanly uninstall post-Vista due to virtualizing filesystem and registry writes that used to gunk up /Windows and /Program Files in XP.
Same for me. I whined about crapware that came with PCs just as everyone else, but with Vista and Win7, I noticed can just uninstall these programs as soon as I fire up the machine for the first time and no harm done.
