Software Test 2

[zaineyma]

Hello,

My organization is to start a company wide desktop deployment. Just as a point of reference (and not something we may necessarily do) I wanted to know how I could find out what software/applications a pc is using? Is there a quick way to do this or some software that could help me do this? All the users differ from one another in terms of what they use and they are not the most clued up. It would be great to find some quick way to scan the pc and know what they use.

Many thanks in advance

 

[goombawaho]

If you want a paid solution (pay as you go), this worked well.

http://www.softchoice.com/services/asset-management/

You run an app on each computer and it audits what software is in use. It puts a result file on a shared drive for each computer, then you send the result files to these people and they put together a report with all kinds of analyses of what you have deployed.

You can figure out how much you are out of compliance pretty quickly then. Plus it tells you lots of about anti-virus, office version, etc., etc. and whether people have installed stuff that shouldn't be there.

 

[zaineyma]

Many thanks for your reply. Are there any alternatives or free solutions?

Thansk again.

 

[goombawaho]

....free solutions"
Yes and there is a free money give away later today as well, but it's at a secret location. But seriously, maybe someone else will have a freebie for you. I wouldn't have answered at all had you stipulated "FREE" in your original post.

 

[guitarzan]

goombawaho: I don't see the OP stipulating anything, just asking if there is also a free solution.

zamy:
Assuming all you are looking for is a list of installed software from a series of remote machines, a vbscript could get the job done. But if you don't have vbscript or programming experience, this can be daunting and frustrating, and you might be better off with a program instead of a script.

I used AIDA32 many years ago, it was free and it worked very nicely on XP machines. It's discontinued now, but you can find it on CNet. (I don't know if it will work on anything newer than XP though).

 

[goombawaho]

Right - first post, no "free" stipulation. But wondering if "free" is always implied in these posts. It's the days of free software for every purpose. There are a lot of software inventory products, but they are not free for corporate use.

The benefit of these paid software packages or audit services is that they often can show you the actual serial numbers or key codes in use on individual machines. Then you not only have a count of how many are in use, but you can see if the same key code has been used 30 times, which in and of itself, is a technical violation of say Microsoft's Office EULA.

I had a company that had installed all the same license number of Office 2000 on most of its machines to standardize the version. They had some office XP and office 2003 CDs/license codes in the software cabinet, but not enough. The software we used sniffed out the situation to make it painfully obvious to management what was going on.

In these audit scenarios you want to punch management with all the facts so they can choose to act or not, but leave no doubt.

 

[zaineyma]

Apologies for the free request. Just planning continency if asked and paid is a viable solution as much as free. In any case thank you for your assistance. Express Metrics is deemed as a good possiblity but will look into the proposed solutions.
Many thanks.

 

[goombawaho]

If you want to test my suggestion out, they'll give you a "live audition" to test it on real computers or at least they would back in 2005.

 

[Diancecht]

You don't need to apologize. Everyone is free to ask despite the personal opinions of people answering.

This one doesn't look bad: [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.spiceworks.com/free-pc-network-inventory-software/[/url]

Cheers,
Dian

 

[Sympology]

Never used it, but Spiceworks (above) is well respected so I'd give them ago.


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