"If Microsoft were serious about giving the end user control, they'd be mandating that systems ship without any keys installed. The user would then have the ability to make an informed and conscious decision to limit the flexibility of their system and install the keys. The user would be told what they'd be gaining and what they'd be giving up."

Sadly, this "inform the user" approach doesn't work 100% of the time. A lot of questions like this (say, on initial boot) are answered by someone who is not the user. Think "Best Buy Optimized."

I didn't think about the case of hardware swaps, and that's even more anti-consumer.