Grey Matter review Estate Guardian 6.0

No problem with running installation.

Most products now come with MMC snap-ins so using it is easy. Having to learn a list of tags can be daunting. Providing a drop-drop of the common ones, or a quick reference/search somewhere would be good (without having to resort to a manual). I ran through some of the example scenarios in the manual and modified them to see different effects. It would be useful to provide some ready-made views that a user could just load in to the snap in, instead of starting from scratch. Perhaps provide them with a basic set up of predefined views - such views could be a list of all machines showing hardware details or showing Office installations, ready for a user to modify and copy.

The list of data it collects is impressive and very useful. I really like the ability to query the machine live according to various criteria: i.e. show me every machine running Win 95 with less than a 400MHz processor that are in the accounts department - ideal for upgrading.

I didn't have a chance to look at the ftp features of the product, but they seem to be very useful for retrieving software updates and suchlike and bring your product into the same area as Microsofts SMS.

I think the product has lots going for it - easy installation, little maintenance once set up and bags of customizable views/features.

When I first looked into acquiring asset and software management software, I researched and evaluated the main products on the market and decided to create an application in house, since all the others I saw didn't provide the remote monitoring features to my liking. This is the first product which does. I think this product should do well against its competitors, particularly given the msi scripts it can run, providing centralised facilities for upgrading machines.

I hope you will find my testing/comments to have been of use, and I expect Estate Guardian to do well.

...It's nice to review a quality product for once!

Nik Beard – Grey Matter
Nik Beard is an administrator at Grey Matter and provides technical support for software installation. Nik has also written several full length articles for the Grey Matter magazine.