Because different hardware configurations may require different software packages to support specific hardware (CD burning software, DVD players) or vendor-specific functionality (management tools, BIOS configuration tools), and because placing these in the computer image would result in significantly larger images (especially if you had many different types of hardware to support), it is useful to be able to install packages based on the type of computer being used. Three separate values are retrieved from the computer's SMBIOS structures using WMI to assist with this process: | • | Make. This specifies the make (or manufacture) of the computer. For example, on a Dell Latitude D600 laptop, the value of Make is "Dell Computer Corporation." | | • | Model. This specifies the specific model name or part number (depending on the vendor) of the computer. On the same Dell Latitude D600, the Model value is "Latitude D600." | | • | Product. With some computer vendors, the make and model may not be sufficient to uniquely identify the characteristics of a particular configuration (for example, hyper-threaded or non-hyper-threaded chipsets). The Product value might be useful to differentiate. On the Dell Latitude D600, the value of Product is "0X2034." |
For the example below, the first two values will be used. As in the previous scenarios, the list of application packages to be installed can be specified in the CustomSettings.ini file or be retrieved from a database. Unlike the previous scenarios, the mechanism of selecting the values is a little more complicated since two different values (make and model) are needed to select the appropriate list of packages.
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