I’m a big fan of open source software. It’s free, it generally has the features I need/want, and it usually doesn’t have the “bloat” associated with commercial software. Not to say that commercial software doesn’t have a place in our daily lives – I am forced to use Microsoft Office, Adobe products, and Microsoft Windows at work – because most people are familiar with commercial software. And from a business standpoint, if an open source application crashes your systems and causes you to lose money, who’s responsible? Whereas there’s always going to be a support person at a commercial place (albeit they might not have the easiest accent to understand, they’re generally helpful for varying needs).

That being said, I find it hard to believe that companies will take great ideas, or several different free software solutions, and tie them up neatly into one package. And then have the audacity to charge several hundred dollars.

PSEXEC tools suite, which was recently bought out by Microsoft itself, is a collection of tools that help in the administration of computers on a network. They’re offered up for free. The ones I use the most are psexec, pslist, and pskill. Psexec will remotely run a program with any privileges you require – that way my “power users” can have the rights to install only the things I send to them. Pslist will list all running processes on a remote computer – this is especially helpful when a user complains that their system is running slow or crashing (it’s usually a website loaded in IE that brings the computer to a halt). Pskill will terminate any running application – which is great when I hear someone playing loud bass across the office – I can remotely shut that music down (grin).

So why would I pay nearly 300 dollars for a suite that promises the following:
Update Group Policy (psexec.exe \\Computername gpupdate.exe)
Start computers by Wake On Lan
Remote restart (shutdown -r -f -m \\Computername -t 30 -c “comment”)
Remote shutdown (shutdown -s -f -m \\Computername -t 30 -c “comment”)
Real time graphical reporting (not sure what they mean, but spiceworks can probably handle this)
Ping (start, run, cmd, ping ip)
Send Message (net send Computername message)
Read Remote Registry (regedit, connect to network registry, Computername)
Run executable (psexec -i -s -d \\computername “C:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe” http://www.google.com)
Run executable remotely (see above)
Start Event Viewer (start, run, eventvwr)
Start Explorer (this should already be running)
Start Remote Desktop (start, run, mstsc, Computername)
Start Remote Assistance (we use VNC for this)
Immediate WSUS client update (psexec.exe \\Computername wuauclt.exe /detctnow)