When you're managing "images", it's much easier when you have a limited amount of hardware to deal with -- especially if/when you have to roll drivers up in you

When you're managing "images", it's much easier when you have a limited amount of hardware to deal with -- especially if/when you have to roll drivers up in your images. This has gotten much better in the last 10 years or so, thanks mostly to Microsoft's improved tooling, but standardizing on specific hardware often saves time more than anything else. I can remember the days when we had to use (for example) "image A" for this model of desktop PC, "image B" for a different model of desktop PC, and even "image C" for a slightly newer hardware revision of the same desktop PC. Fortunately, I didn't have to create or maintain those images. At a .edu I worked at, preparing and deploying new images was often the biggest project of our summers.