Good point - but seems better to me to run a single specific, non-free app (which may or may not depend on the manufacturer's servers to function), than to add

Good point - but seems better to me to run a single specific, non-free app (which may or may not depend on the manufacturer's servers to function), than to add another non-free dependency to it (i.e. XP), which definitely _does_ require manufacturer's permission (i.e. activation servers) to function normally.