You can go to the control panel and Remove Software feature to take off all the Sony media stuff. Or you can reformat the hard drive and load anything you want on. A friend runs NetBSD Unix on his. When I get my new TR2, I'm going to wipe the hard drive on my Picturebook and load Windows Server 3000 and use it as a server.

As for durability, I've logged about a million miles with my current Vaio. It's rock solid. But I've heard complaints from others so I'm sure they aren't all perfect.