Orwell wrote:
1) What kind of psychotic warranty do you have that is voided if you partition your hard drive?
Some companies offer software warranty, i.e. a Ghost image. If they repartition the drive, the image could run into problems when restoring, and companies dont want to have to do more work than required - its a "one size fits all" solution for end users.
Pretty much every Notebook comes with a preload and "make your own recovery disks" software nowdays. But that is a "restore it yourself" feature.
_________________
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" (Carl Sagan)