I just swapped my motherboard for a new one. Pretty damned impressed with the way Windows 8 handled the swap. Turned it on, made adjustments in the bios, restarted and the computer booted to my SSD. Windows displayed a message "Configuring Hardware" for about 4-5 minutes, booted into windows and windows even preserved my drive lettering assignments. Took 20 minutes to install the board, 10 to configure the bios and perform the first boot, 5 minutes to activate by phone.
My 2 computers at home having the exact same Mainboard, but CPU,Memory and Graphic Card. I could just take the System HDD out of one and take in the other Computer and run without the need of re-activation. Windows 8 react in that same as Windows 7 or Vista in the past. Would be interesting to know if other users having the same experiences if using the same MB a replacement for the old MB.
Windows 7 for me with a new (different board) was hit or miss as to if would even make it to windows. More often than not the install ended up being borked. Windows 8 handled it all by itself. Didn't have to delete any devices. Just booted and it worked.
That's true for Windows 7 in case that you swap the MB with and different Model and Brand. If using the same Brand but Model, in many occasions it work but all of them. And a new activation was need as well. What I was mean in my post above, were that in case of using the same MB, Model and Brand, I wasn't need to reactivate, the prior activation was just working. The MB's I use at home are ASRock 990 FX Professional Fatl1ty.
I think this is a feature that comes with "Windows 8 To Go" (which also can be created with "Windows 8 Pro" - not only "Windows 8 Enterprise"). When you plug in the "Windows 8 To Go" drive to an other PC or notebook the system must also ignore / forget / disable the unnecessary device driver.