We are opening small web kiosk stores in rural India and Mexico and are hoping to drive down the equipment and software costs via using Celeron/Sempron processors and the lowest Windows OS edition possible.

The kiosks will be using CyberCafePro software with a Main Control Station connected via a simple LAN. We had hoped to use mirror imaging so as to not have to have the physical game CDs be present when a game is being played on a client machine (CCP will manage the license usage).

Symantec mentioned that Windows ME could work on the client side, but doen not support Windows XP Home. Might Windows XP Home work with Symantec's Ghost -- or do we need to instead spec the higher cost of Windows XP Pro?

Are there any other alternatives that would be easy to use (as our individual store operator IT knowledge will be minimal).

Any advice would be most appreciated.

What exactly do you want to do with Ghost? Use it to do the initial install of all the client machines to save time?

You can use freeware cloning utilities like g4u or udpcast to send a disk image to several computers simultaneously. Those will work on anything above a 486DX.

ghost 2003 will work on any windows versions, but to date you have to get it with the crappy ghost v.10 (which can only run on XP +) as a bundle...

i have the box right now and system specs follow..

Norton Ghost 2003
winxp home/pro, 2000pro, NT WS with SP6 or higer, Me, 98
-133MHz + processer
-50mb hdd space
-cd/vd drive
-IE 5.5 +

supports:
-FAT 16/16x/32/32x
-NTFS
-Dynamic disks
-linux EXT2/3 and swap parts
-CDr/rw and DVD r+-R/rw drives
-usb and firewire devices
-Iomega, Zip, and Jaz drives

i assume you're planing to install ghost to one machine, then clone the hdd to a cd or lan then install it on every pc to cut down time? this will do the job nicely, but as nodsu says, you can get free ones..

Thanks for the free software tip. Our only interest is in being able to: 1) avoid the need for actual CD-ROMs on each computer to play games; and 2) to make it easier and cut the time to install new games or software on all the clients within each of the stores.

I presume the referrals you mentioned would both do the job?

What would it take to learn the process for this? Anyone you know who'd be willing to walk me thru the steps (perhaps online with a WebEx-like program and also on the phone), for which I'd be willing to pay for the time? (Ditto for some basic Windows XP networking tips for the kiosk clients as well.) Thanks.

Unless the CCP software or something else) provides some kind of remote CD drive access, then the no CD requirement is tricky (unless you put no-CD cracks on every copy-protected game).

Hard drive cloning using Ghost or anything else means that your target computers have to be identical. If you have that, then yes - you can do the install on one computer and then just broadcast the hard drive image to all the other machines (you need to personally reboot all of them of course). And no, cloning programs don't know anything about CDs or copy protection schemes.