Systems Deployment

Hi,

Situation:
At our company we have used PowerQuest's DriveImage Lite product to create all of our images for our various models. For workstations (needing to be imaged) that have fibre connection to our RIS server they pull the image from there, and for workstations that are at a slower location we have made bootable CDs that have the PQI image right on them, and PQIDPLYZ.EXE to put it onto the local HDD. This has served us well for quite some time, and DriveImage Lite is free so that's been great.

Problem:
I have built a new image for each of our models, the image includes SP2 and all subsequent critical patches - but now my images are weighing in at more than 800MB for the first time, creating a problem because Drive Image Lite doesn't do spanning, and making bootable DVDs with the images is useless because more than half my workstation fleet do NOT have DVD-ROMs.

Question:
I am now forced to consider options, and would appreciate advice - specifically:
* are there any low or zero cost alternatives to Drive Image or Ghost (Ghost is pricey - and Symantec bought Powerquest so it looks like a one-horse race)
Though presently I'm thinking of just using WinPE and our various Net Support guys can load on all PQIs they need to a portable USB HDD or something, but I am not sure if Drive Image Lite command will launch in WinPE.

Also, has anyone wokred with ImageX by Microsoft?

Any pointers or ideas would be appreciated...