That is correct. They have to have certain Intel processors in addition to meeting height, weight, battery and storage performance guidelines.

The bandwidth caps ended cord cutting as a viable tactic for any home where the TV runs a lot, i.e. children are involved.

I agree, but thankfully there are no caps where I live (currently). Time Warner tried and failed, but they may still give it another push. Dropping their phone and cable package saves me over $100 a month. Granted, it raises the base price of their internet service, but the bill is still substantially less.
With that said, I only follow a few TV shows (free basic cable), so to me this is the best value. Anything else, I will stream if it is available. This will not the best option for everyone, but I believe you should keep your monthly bills (especially subscription services) to a minimum.

That still saddles YOU with being tier 1, 2, 3, n support for basically the rest of your life. Worst case, things go horribly wrong, days/weeks of work are lost, and you are on the hook for that too.

This. If you are offering it (whether you created the software or not), be prepared to support it.

Just playing devil's advocate, but is supporting Windows 7 and MS office really that bad?

Some people are going to hate it just because of market dominance, just like how some people hate all Apple products.

Google just wants Ahmadinejad to admit to the holocaust, then they can have their precious label.

Price Charles beat you to it, in 2008.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html

If it is XP, my suggestion is to build two different reference images.
All of my Windows XP images have been specific to the model of the build system at work. It may be possible to make a generic Windows XP image for different hardware configurations, but I honestly have never tried it.

To give you an example of the issue we ran into; newer laptops and desktops with updated chipsets would give an error during the configuration portion with our generic Windows 7 .wim image. I located the latest chipset drivers and used DISM to properly insert them into the .wim, which resolved the problem.
Also, I only use the tools Microsoft provides to capture a SysPrep'ed OS; never Partimage, Ghost or Acronis.

I am not an expert on Microsoft's Deployment Toolkit, just trying to point out that they do offer a solution to customize the operating system to your needs and deploy without the purchase of additional software. It is not an overnight process to learn, unless you are extremely gifted.

If I could, I would of given you all my mod points.

Cloning software does work work, both have their purpose.
With .wim images, I can manually add drivers and certain MS updates with DISM. This is great for when you have 100 new laptops to get ready for students.
Or I can manually setup one laptop, then build a customized image.
I am not saying this is easier than Ghost (or other software), that would be lying, but there are a lot of aspects with Windows images that I like. Combining multiple images into one and utilizing single-instance storage allows me to have a 32bit and 64bit image in one ~8GB file. Anytime it is updated, I can replace the .wim file on my USB flash drive, which boots with the Windows installer and graphically guides me along. No more WinPE command line needed, unless I want to appear busy.

Boring read.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577

So does (did) our department. Internally we have updated all of our XP images moved away from Ghost, but there are other IT clusters that still use the old Ghost images.
Our XP systems are shrinking in number; however there will still be a percentage out in the wild for the next few years.

Our IT department built Windows 7 images that can be deployed across different hardware builds.
This was after we were asked to find a solution without purchasing additional software, which we did.

Now I want access to SCCM.

Also, making an image of a Windows installation with Ghost, Acronis or another program of your choice is not the "correct" way to image multiple machines.