We sell HP gear almost exclusively and were just as disconcerned as you guys when they changed policy. Like vacunita, we always installed Windows without the HP stuff for our customers, so we had to review our policy too.
Our conclusion is that we go the HP way. The security manager, especially with the new notebooks with the embedded TPM security chip, is vital if you carry around sensitive company information.
The recovery manager is a problem for ordinary users. Even if your lucKy to have a DL DVD drive, it is still time consuming creating your recovery disks. We are fortunate in that we have a dedicated server where we store the recovery for our customers, so it is reasonably quick.
HP now do a NAS docking station which will store the recovery for both the locally connected laptop or for a network attached notebook.
Regards: tf1