application staging from my understanding is copying file to their proper locations, but not making actuall system modifications such as reg settings and installing services.

there is reference to this in the OPK, but i can't find any specific documentation on how to exactly accomplish this.

the benefit of would be that for example office xp and office 2003 could be installed on the same master image. then at install time either ap could be fully installed and the other deleted. the deletion is far faster than a copy.

thanks to anyone with info

you could use something like WPI and just choose which one you want to install on a given system

There may be a way to do that, but it's going to waste a sizeable chunk of space on your hard disk, for what's likely to be a marginal speed increase. If you really want to have two versions of Office available for install, I would just make an installer for each, and leave the installer itself, in .exe form, on the hard disk. Put it somewhere like C:\Installers, and maybe even make shortcuts to the installers in a special folder in the Start Menu. Have the shortcuts delete whichever installer is not used.