Why Acronis don't provide WinPE media with their products
EASEUS and Paragon Now provide WinPE bootable media with their products without forcing users make it by themselves and download and install that big AIK file from microsoft (1.7 GB). When acronis will do the same?
I think that Microsoft charges vendors for that right to create PE files for customers.
It's an extra cost (due to MS licensing fees) in a very competitive market. You can get it with the Pluspack, for extra cost but if it was built into the basic edition, yould have to pay more for that. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying more to be able to get the windows drivers on the boot CD, but that's not a preference evryone has.
The PlusPack allows the user to create their own wim after downloading the AIK tools from Microsoft.
Also i can't figure out a good reason to create my own wim file.
Then you would do best to stick with stick with a fresh install of Windows with an appropriate license. ;)
The VistaPE version was intended by MS as a tool for organizational deployment of MS software, hence the WIM -- you could walk up to a machine, boot from the CD and then do whatever, transfer a specific image taht your organizaton uses, or run a few tooks.
There's no easy way to take a OS set up to run on one set of hardware and macke it run on another. You have to have a way to remove all the drivers designed for the "old" hardware" and insert in ther place drivers for the "new" hardware.
Plus Pack makes it about as painless as it can get -- it's designed for migrating a disk image to disimilar hardware --, but, imo, it's generally better to jsut do a fresh install -- fewer issues inthe long run.
I only know of one product for which the boot disk is Win OS from the get-go and it has substantialy fewer features than Acronis but costs substantially (about 25%) more. MS never comes cheap ;)
I only know of one product for which the boot disk is Win OS from the get-go and it has substantialy fewer features than Acronis but costs substantially (about 25%) more. MS never comes cheap ;)
There is a reasonably well known one mentioned in the original post that is quite virtuous, provides a WinPE 3 recovery environment in addtition to the Linux recovery environment. Cost is $30. You need to download an additional file from your account and run it to create the WinPE CD - a lot simpler than fooling with the WAIK etc.
TI may have more features but in my case they are not required.
Read this post quickly, It may not last.
I am with you guys. WinPE would be the way to go.
At the end of the day, it is a business decision. Depending how the licensing works (cap/no cap), Acronis might not be able to recoup the incremental costs with more sales. In the meantime, competition chooses WinPE and hardware option changes on the PC don't slow down...
I am wondering how the ATI business is doing (users, revenues, costs, ...)
Sure, I've tried it and come back to ATI -- actually, at the time it was the scheduling and auto-file management that was critical for me. Now, the 2011 BootCD is so good, I don't care if it's Windows or not. Not true for me of prior versions.
What I'd like is a boot CD that I can make by clicking a button, has all the right drivers and I don't have to tell it what drivers to use. Problem is, computers are so damned complicated, no one understands how they work anymore, not really. when cmputers take over the worldk, it won't be because they are so smart, it will be because, like in Gilliam's Brazil, they're so unreliable, no one can keep up with the mistakes anymore and just take them all for granted. ;)