The fact that Apple would have charged me $450 to do the same thing still bothers me. If it lasts for another 1.5 years then I will be happy that I've gotten the intended use out of it.
Also, I use Pages part of iWork to write on my laptop. When you install it, you serial number doesn't work. Only after searching the apple web site you realize you need to manually patch iWork to get it to accept your serial number. Making software that difficult to use out of the box for everyone to stop the few that steal is just wrong.