My brother runs his own PC tech support business, and had heard that WAS the case, so he was naturally a bit nervous about what the future was bringing to him. (In the past, if he spent x hours reimaging a PC, with Vista it might be x hours + y hours now. Not including phone support with Microsoft, which has turned him, on occasion into nearly a raving lunatic)
I have since heard that Microsoft changed it prior to the general release of Vista, so changing the motherboard would not require the hoops, but...I have not heard any confirmation on that.
it's basically the same rules as XP, and Vista's algorithm is actually a little bit less restrictive than XP is.