Question : Using GPO to deploy Office 2007 over manually installed Office 2002

I have a base of 25 XP Pro machines in an AD domain with Office XP and Publisher 2002 installed manually at some prior point. I now want to update them to Office 2007 SB which includes Publisher. I would like to install this using GPO. Mostly for practice.  The servers are  2003 R2 .

I know I have to remove the existing Office installation manually before I do this, but I am wondering if it's really worth the trouble. I mean sure next time Office gets updated it would be worth it as the update can occur using the GPO but I have only deployed one item using GPO and it was designed specifically for that purpose so it worked perfectly.

Will Office 2007 be as kind?  I want to do this but I want to be practical too.  I welcome advise and counsel.

Answer : Using GPO to deploy Office 2007 over manually installed Office 2002

http://blog.stealthpuppy.com/group-policy/office-2007-deployment-via-group-policy

or

Use Group Policy to assign computer startup scripts for 2007 Office deployment

I recommend to use a startup script, if you have no other possibilities to deploy Office 2007. You likely have to adjust the maximum wait time of group policy scripts as described here

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc940027.aspx

Otherwise the script is terminated after 10 minutes which is maybe too short for most productive computers. I used 30 minutes.