We wanted to call this review "Attack of the Disk Clones," but the products we tested--Altiris' Deployment Solution 5.5, PowerQuest's DeployCenter 2.0 and Symantec's Ghost 7.5, as well as Microsoft's Remote Installation Service (RIS), which is part of Windows 2000 Server--are far from menacing.
Based on our experience, we feel that imaging by way of bootable disks should be a thing of the past even for small organizations. Intel's PXE provides any NIC with enough smarts to boot up from the network, and the products we tested let you perform hands-off imaging. We could grab an image from a client machine or push a new one out. We did this by installing client software and a hidden partition containing everything necessary for the client to connect to the imaging server. Our Editor's Choice--Altiris' Deployment Solution--even let us push the client software, meaning no trips to users' desktops. And imaging is only one benefit of these products: They also help you troubleshoot end-user systems and migrate to new operating systems.
Altiris edged out rivals thanks to its host of unique features and 100 percent hands-off imaging capabilities. The venerable Ghost, with its strong centralized control and reasonable price, came in second. We don't consider the three specialized packages pricey in relation to their usefulness, but for the truly budget conscious, Microsoft's RIS and User State Migration Tool are included in Windows 2000 Server and can get the job done.
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