Automated Installation for Windows 7

It’s kind of funny how timing works out sometimes. About a week ago I mentioned in one of my blog posts that I hadn’t seen an automatic installation kit for Windows 7 yet. Today Microsoft sent an E-mail message to beta testers asking them to try out some of the new Windows 7 tools. Among these tools were:

• The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit
• The Application Compatability Toolkit
• The User State Migration Tool
• The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

None of these tools are really new. We had all of them in Vista, and some have been around for longer than that. I haven’t had a chance to download any of the new versions yet, but it will be interesting to see how much or how little these tools might have changed.