I'm sorry for the trouble you experienced. It's bad enough to re-install, re-serialize, and re-authenticate software, but to have the come atop multiple OS installs and hardware replacements, I'd be pretty unhappy too.

That repeated serial-authentication through "product activation" should be pretty easy to minimize, though. If you know you'll be replacing part of your hardware, thus breaking the old activation key, then just use that "Transfer Your License" item in the Help Menu. (This shouldn't usually be necessary, but if you're doing multiple hardware replacements within a short period of time then it can help.) Here's source info:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/activation/faq/#itemE-6

The goal here is to reduce casual copying, particularly among businesses, so that honest individual users don't end up paying more than their share for software development. But at the same time, this can't become any kind of hassle for the actual customers. If you see a situation in which the Macromedia activation implementation gives you a hard time, I'd strongly request that you drop a note at that "Activation Feedback" link, so that we could smooth out any remaining rough edges. Thanks!
http://www.macromedia.com/software/activation/

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