Windows Activation plays no role in this... certainly not in Windows 7. I just bought a new HP 8540w Win 7 Pro with USB 3.0 for about $2,000... And have been playing around with it. I cloned the primary drive to an Intel X25-m SSD... Housed in a Vantec External Enclosure connected by USB 3.0... And the HP 8540w WILL boot and run off the external SSD... And it runs about as fast as a Velociraptor... No where near SSD speeds, but faster than a laptop drive. The big issue with USB flash media... Is that Windows will only recognize one partition on "removable media"... So if I just copy the entire Win 7 DVD to a Kingston flash drive... It does boot off the USB flash drive, but it runs slower than even a laptop drive... Not sure if there are very fast USB flash drives out there. There are several ways like using special drivers... To get Win XP and 7 to boot off USB flash media as if it were a true hard drive. http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7512