So, it's running at install time. As I said, I'm ok with that.

>You are periodically forced to re-run WGA; otherwise you don't get updates.
>
>If you apply updates through Microsoft or Windows Update, either automatically or manually, you have no control over the info MS gathers. The ActiveX has carte blanche.
>
>An alternative is to download and apply the appropriate updates individually; but you can't download some of them without going through WGA. It's a lot of work for minimal gain; I don't know anyone who applies their patches that way.