It is very likely that the tech who you spoke to at the cable company may have been misunderstood. What people have stated is factual stuff to a degree.
As long as there is a small partition created for the boot loader ala grub, Lilo or even the Windoze NT/2K bootloader called NTLDR, and as long as there is sufficient disk space in each partition, there is no problem running multiple Operating Systems. On this machine which I am coming here, I have 4 OS's loaded and Windows is the only one which cannot read the partitioins of the other OS's. I can read all partitions from my other OS's.
Volume licensing is different than single user licences, and PCs purchased for home use do not typically come with volume licenses. This includes most all software which is being sold in the market today. Like I said yesterday, it is really unfortunate that the help desks are being person'ed by people who are actually doing a great disservice to otherwise innocent people like yourself.
If you asked me, it would not be worth your while to take the trouble of setting up the network install routines just for one additional machine. That strategy is typically useful for Network Administrators when they are tasked with installing/configuring a large number of PCs with identical software components in a relatively short time-frame specified for a turn-around.
The PC vendors are sneaky too. They try to cut corners by not giving their customers the proper Media disks unless specifically asked for.
Caveat Emptor, man. Buyer Beware. You might be able to squeeze the System Disks on CD from the vendor who sold you the PC, particularly if you have the receipt handy.
The Micro$oft EULA is a tricky document, thank heavens all the machines I have and all the software I install have open volume licenses.
If you know someone or have a friend with the CD and they let yah borrow it, go for it. Is it illegal??? Yes, technically it is. Is anybody going to ever find out??? Probably not. Good luck!!!
