Several hours later

We are approaching usability.

My colleague, Marc, rebuilds his systems even more frequently than I do. He uses group policy driven installs, putting a system back together in about twenty minutes.  This, as much as anything illustrates the difference in our approaches: Marc gets a result quickly, whereas I tend to be a bit slower, possibly changing things and re-doing whatever doesn't seem quite right.  It's not a search for the perfect PC by any means - but some of the applications I use either change far too frequently to spend time setting up MSI installs, or are too complex, or have odd licensing requirements that mean automated installs are far more trouble than they are worth.  When it comes to loading the various add-ons for Firefox and IE, there simply isn't a mechanism for an MSI-based install.

Also, in moving to a new OS, I've found that some of the programs I use are not at all happy.  MS Money, in the very old version that I still rely on from 2001, simply won't run at all under Vista.  Now, how do I automate the creation and install of a virtual PC image and then load Money 2000, followed by the 2001 upgrade?

At the other end of the spectrum, there are the one-click installs - Google Earth is the easiest example I can think of, just take the (latest) install file and run it.

Somewhere in between are the applications that I think gain most from the GPO install route, stuff like Office and similar products.  If I did the job often enough, and relied on these, perhaps I'd see the light and go for GPO.

...assuming I don't get rid of the server, that is.  That's another story.