True, when all computers are using the same HAL you can use (ghost) images. Since images are a static thing (all computers will have the same software versions as your master computer and also newer windows updates aren't included), it is wise to create an unattended installation to install the computers. An unattended installation is more flexible and you can update it with newer versions of software and include the latest hotfixes. Then, when you need to (re)install some or all of your systems you can use the unattended install to install the master computer and use ghost to do this fairly quickly on all other systems. On my company images have a certain lifetime, since they are quickly out of date, so we are only using them to quickly install a batch of computers using our unattended. For home users i understand the ease of images. Since this is just my personal opinion, feel free to totaly ignore what i wrote Just hope this is of any use to you