I found Symantec Ghost very simple to use. We utilized it to create a clone of a standard desktop or laptop image. We then utilized these images for all of our PCs.

We used Symantec Ghost on our computers we had at college both in the labs and throughout the public locations on campus. Using Ghost greatly simplified the setup and maintenance of public use computers. The suite made it fairly easy to update the various images for the different computers we maintained as well and allowed us to deploy images en' mass over the network. The initial setup of the system and server was a bit complicated, but once that portion was complete, using the suite was straightforward. For lab management, or public computers that need to be maintained regardless of who uses them, I would recommend looking into Symantec Ghost Suite.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is well suited for larger environments. It helps to manage the mass of computers we use. I find Ghost most helpful with standard hardware model computers.

In the past I worked in a university where classroom PCs needed to be refreshed after every course, that means wiping the drives clean, reinstalling the operating system, drivers, updates, applications, and configuring everything to be the same as the other PCs in the classroom. As you can imagine that process takes several hours to do just 1 PC but with Symantec Ghost I can create a baseline image in a few minutes and push that image to the PCs I want simultaneously and the whole process just takes about 10 minutes (your mileage may vary depending on your network speed, number of PCs, size of image, etc.). Symantec Ghost Solution Suite provides several tools to manage the above tasks such as the Ghost Server, Ghost client boot media, Ghost Explorer to view and edit image files without having to rebuild them. Once you understand the concept of multicasting, the software is pretty straightforward to use: Create an image of your baseline PC, Create bootable CDs, discs, or USB sticks for your client PCs you want to image, start a Ghost multicast session on the Ghost server and give it the image file you want to push, boot the client PCs to the session you created and sit back and watch 10 or 100s of PCs get all their needed software in a few minutes.

We have used it for automated system rollouts and its a cost and time saver