We chose to pull Numara's Track-It product out of our main comparison, because it doesn't fit all the categories we tested. What it does deliver is solid value for the small and midsize business looking primarily for a tool to assist help desk personnel.

Deploy 7.0 is an add-on module to the Track-It product that is focused on software deployment but doesn't directly support workstation imaging. It will uninstall any software it discovers that doesn't meet a list of approved applications.

Track-It performs the help-desk function really well, because that's what it was designed for. One of the things you see when you open the technician client is the tracking of work orders. The console user interface is clean and snappy. Navigating through different client machines or searching for a particular machine takes only a few mouse clicks.

Track-It comes with a number of predefined reports and uses Crystal Reports to build custom ones. The enterprise edition comes with a professional version of Crystal Reports for creating or modifying reports.

Resetting a password is one of those tasks end users hate to have to call the help desk for. Track-It is the only product we tested that provides an automated way for end users to fix forgotten passwords out of the box. It uses a set of challenge-response questions from a Web-based form to reset an Active Directory domain account. Employees would need to use a co-worker's machine to access the Web page, but they wouldn't have to call the help desk.