Imaging Rights - Windows - Looking for clarification
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Dustin asked about adding security drivers to an OEM install.
That's a great question. I kinda have to figure the OEMs themselves have a method for updating their OEM image that they deploy to machines (yes they deploy an image, they don't install Windows), so I'd be surprised that you couldn't update the OEM media (assuming you have the MS OEM media, not a co-branded OEM media/image recovery).
Think slipstreaming updates/drivers. -
@Dashrender said:
Dustin asked about adding security drivers to an OEM install.
That's a great question. I kinda have to figure the OEMs themselves have a method for updating their OEM image that they deploy to machines (yes they deploy an image, they don't install Windows), so I'd be surprised that you couldn't update the OEM media (assuming you have the MS OEM media, not a co-branded OEM media/image recovery).
Think slipstreaming updates/drivers.You might be able to, but the cost and complexity of doing this would be silly as you could move to reimaging rights for so cheap and get so much more benefit from this. Doing it to OEM installation media would be cumberson, non-repeatable and still leaving you needing to do one to one installs. The effort of doing that once would justify going to reimaging rights.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Dustin asked about adding security drivers to an OEM install.
That's a great question. I kinda have to figure the OEMs themselves have a method for updating their OEM image that they deploy to machines (yes they deploy an image, they don't install Windows), so I'd be surprised that you couldn't update the OEM media (assuming you have the MS OEM media, not a co-branded OEM media/image recovery).
Think slipstreaming updates/drivers.You might be able to, but the cost and complexity of doing this would be silly as you could move to reimaging rights for so cheap and get so much more benefit from this. Doing it to OEM installation media would be cumberson, non-repeatable and still leaving you needing to do one to one installs. The effort of doing that once would justify going to reimaging rights.
Absolutely - for a business, maybe not for a poor college student. But perhaps even then it would be worth buying a VL (though they have to buy 5 licenses to get started... so maybe not).
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@Dashrender said:
Absolutely - for a business, maybe not for a poor college student. But perhaps even then it would be worth buying a VL (though they have to buy 5 licenses to get started... so maybe not).
Why would a college student be taking the time to slipstream drivers? That makes no sense outside of a business unless there is a use case I can't imagine. Where is the value in this to anyone? Remember you can just throw drivers and updates on a USB stick if you want.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Absolutely - for a business, maybe not for a poor college student. But perhaps even then it would be worth buying a VL (though they have to buy 5 licenses to get started... so maybe not).
Why would a college student be taking the time to slipstream drivers? That makes no sense outside of a business unless there is a use case I can't imagine. Where is the value in this to anyone? Remember you can just throw drivers and updates on a USB stick if you want.
When I was messing around at home many moons ago, I did exactly this. Putting drivers an update on a memory stick simply meant skipping the download process, but I still have to deal with the update process and that's still many hours. If I can just pop in a disk and basically click install, and when it's down there are few or no updates to install - that's nice!
But as you said, that's an extreme edge case, and completely moot point for business - who should be purchasing VL if for no other reason that imaging rights alone!
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@Dashrender said:
When I was messing around at home many moons ago, I did exactly this. Putting drivers an update on a memory stick simply meant skipping the download process, but I still have to deal with the update process and that's still many hours. If I can just pop in a disk and basically click install, and when it's down there are few or no updates to install - that's nice!
But it is all automated. You just say "update" and let it do its thing. Yeah, it is a little time, but is it nearly as much time as downloading the updates regularly and building a new build DVD "just in case"? It isn't like you get to skip the update step you just, maybe, shorten it. But there is so much effort involved. Is investing tons of your time up front better than letting the computer invest a little of its time later, maybe?
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@scottalanmiller said:
But it is all automated. You just say "update" and let it do its thing. Yeah, it is a little time, but is it nearly as much time as downloading the updates regularly and building a new build DVD "just in case"? It isn't like you get to skip the update step you just, maybe, shorten it. But there is so much effort involved. Is investing tons of your time up front better than letting the computer invest a little of its time later, maybe?
This is the reason I do not bother with it. If a client has a machine infested, i blow it out , reinstall from the original recovery and let it update. My time is less than an hour for the entire process. The computer's time is tons.
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It would be an odd case where there is no business value to be had in the VL, the user's time is worth basically zero, the computer's time is somehow very valuable but backups aren't worth the effort. There might be a case in there somewhere, but I'm not sure anyone could come up with the unique set of circumstances to make those factors come true.
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I do not do imaging, because i have so few same hardware machines at each site. there is just not enough to gain from setting up imaging and then updating images and all that.
If I had more similar machines per site, or more failures of the ones that are similar, that would be different.
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@JaredBusch said:
I do not do imaging, because i have so few same hardware machines at each site. there is just not enough to gain from setting up imaging and then updating images and all that.
If I had more similar machines per site, or more failures of the ones that are similar, that would be different.
For imagine yes, I agree, it's pretty rare that I take the time and effort to image. Reimaging rights, though, I use often just so that we don't have to maintain media for different machines, track which go to which or worry about any bloatware at all.
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You can just setup your image to have all of the drivers you have in a local folder on the image. Make a registry change to include this folder.
At system startup on the hardware windows will search this folder for additional drivers and install them as required.
Imaging just makes so much more sense when you take full advantage of it.
This way, if we went and bought a completely different computer, all I have to do is update the image to include drives for that hardware type, and deploy it.
Done.
In a working state in a little as 30 minutes.
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Yes, definitely, for a shop of any size imaging AND reimaging together make total sense. Pretty much unbeatable.
