I think that's exactly it. People in favor of OEM's think that the BIOS are part of a project intended to built a better (and uniform) machine that can be easily replaced by a "twin" when they fail. But they got confused in the way :).
Thanks a lot for your message.

... Anything IT does result in little payback for IT. People only realize us when something bad happens.

It's been a while, but I think it may still work (or even work better with new devices)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2001/pulpit_20010712_000697.html