Well ... that's why I always grateful that I chose my iMac in a quite good time. I still have the good ol' Snow Leopard restore DVD came with my iMac .. but also still eligible for Lion free upgrade.
IT was a turkey shoot for me
!! Apple's policy to go with Lion as disk-less OS is too risky. At least SL has been mature, and Lion is still a cub. Something could just go wrong, restore partition in HDD can somehow be erased or damaged by user, or even by the system itself.
At least by having the DVD, you have a grip when something go really wrong with the whole OS on the hard drive. Sure, Lion will be sold as thumb drive alternative to make life easier. Not just avoiding download for people with lousy internet connection, but also having a physical media of OS is better.
But you know, Apple sell that kind of Lion for another $70 .. even after you buy a $1000 - $3000 Mac??!! Please, ohh .. don't you see they being stingy not to include the thumb drive in the package?
If Apple want to go completely diskless with Lion, at least they should provide OS on different disk or dedicated NAND/flash. Look at PS3, common user won't be able to touch the OS. It has its own flash for restoring, you can just swap the HDD easily without worrying you'd lose OS completely.