Chocolatey vs. PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Chocolately is perfect if you need a robust, well-supported (by the community) package manager. It has basically every major library/tool that you need to do development. I used it specifically in UI test automation.

Incentivized

PDQ Inventory is great if you have a local network of computers on or off a domain. As long as you have a way to log into them with common credentials. Great for large organizations, particularly ones interconnected with VPNs. PDQ Inventory isn't so great for PCs that aren't connected to the same LAN the server is on. (i.e. non-vpn remote users) They used to have a remote agent you could install, but it was removed after numerous issues.

Incentivized

• Package management
• Dependency management
• Ease of use
• Availability of libs

Incentivized

• Deploy updates to software like Adobe and Java
• Show which computers are currently connected and turned on
• Turn on computers that are off
• Turn off computers that are on
• View which hardware (RAM, HDD, processor, etc) is on each device

Incentivized

• Available software to install is not easy to find.
• You need admin rights to install all software.

Incentivized

• The scripting part could benefit from samples / examples
• Deployment scenarios could be included for ease on first use
• Including Inventory directly within Deploy would be great

Incentivized

PDQ is very useful and one of the tools that we use a lot.

Incentivized

The interface is straight forward and guides you through the process there. PDQ keeps track of the when new updates are made available writes the scripts and all l you need to do is push the button. (Mr George Jetson) Now with the download done you just sit back worry free and watch the software install in 1% of the time it would take to take care of the PC manually.

Incentivized

I have not had to use PDQ Deploy support's process. In terms of the actual application, I haven't found an exe, msi or script that I can throw at it that it can't handle. Being able to call the config file for Office is an especially useful feature.

Incentivized

On OSX machines we use brew which works if compared to Chocolatey, a lot better. You could see that on Windows machines the idea of a command line-based software installation tool is not very common, especially if you want to use tools like Python or other scripting languages.

Incentivized

The only other product on the market is Ninite, the major disadvantaged of Ninite you need to build you own packages and scripts for deployment. I would much rather download the packages and manager the software in this fashion then to take all of the time to do it Ninites way. I would need to go find and keep update date in the industry when a vendor updates something... I have not time to do this Please Choice PDQ.

Incentivized

• Improved time to setup new machines
• Improved security due to easy update process of installed software

Incentivized

• Convenience! Despite being a small team, PDQ Deploy has boosted our ability to deliver up-to-date Windows applications to our client PCs in a fraction of the time it took when the process was a manual one. Our reach has naturally improved; installing a simple application on a suite of 20 PCs no longer seems to be a daunting task.
• TIME-SAVING! I cannot emphasize enough the time savings one can enjoy with this product!

Incentivized