I have a client who has a computer they want to upgrade. They are unable to tell me the specs of this computer and they're not the type of person I could walk it through with.
Ideally, I'd like to send them an application (or a link to an application) which will generate a report telling me everything I need to know about their hardware and OS. It would have to be very easy to use. Ideally only two or three steps to generate a report.
Free is definitely better. Any ideas?
Belarc Advisor
Running the advisor on a PC will generate a report to a web browser. Details cover both hardware and software of the machine with a very useful amount of detail (such as license keys for some software).
From that point you could have them print the page to PDF if they have something such as Adobe Acrobat or a 3rd party pdf printer installed, save the html page and email it to you, or simply print it and fax it to you. Whatever you think your user would be most comfortable with.
Try running it on your own PC and check out the report results, there is a lot of good detail there.
What we use at my office for this purpose is PCWizard:
http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php
It's free as in beer, and works very well.
Open Audit is another free alternative; http://www.open-audit.org/standalone.php
Simple VB Script you can run/edit
SIW is another good one.