Ah, that's a fair point. The post is, in the end, imploring MS to change. And I suppose part of that point is the economic one that MS is losing sales because of this. Adding the premise that you want to send an economic message to MS as well, and assuming that the author needs Windows, it doesn't seem like there's a good way to satisfy all of the requirements. Still seems like the closest thing would be to buy a copy, install a pirated version, write a blog post like this one, and threaten not to upgrade or to switch to a competitor.

This. This is exactly the point. It is a really safe bet that in a few years I'll be sitting at the telephone activation screen after paying for another version of Windows and upgrading a motherboard, cursing as I enter the sixth block of digits into the IVR for the forth time. And that is bullshit.