You are right, everybody hates NetBIOS! And that is why I was just thinking to disable NetBIOS on the 2003/XP network I am going to setup next week from the beginning.
After reading your article I have to think about it twice.

Btw, I recently had a "Western Digital MyWorld Book II" (or similar) on my desk. I wasn't able to access its shares until.... I enabled NetBIOS on my Vista machine.