twodaend

I was wondeirng how does one verify if client for microsoft is installed on a machine without actually being at the machine. For example, we have ~1500 machines with an unknown amount not having the client installed. We are looking to first verify how many machines do not have the client and depending on how many how can we remotly deploy the client. We initially thought of looking in the registry, but cannot find a key that will identify if the client is installed or not. Our not guess was to write a script, but again, we do not know what to check for within the script. Is there a way to check if the client for microsoft is installed and if not, install it to a mass amount of machines. Thanks for the help