AIDA64 Business Edition is a professional network management solution which can audit, analyse and control all the Windows systems connected to your network.

The program's inventory tools can record all the core details you need to know about each system: its basic hardware setup (motherboard, CPU, RAM type and amount), installed devices, Windows version, installed Windows patches and more.

AIDA64's software analysis is, if anything, even more in-depth. There are lists of installed applications, licence keys, security applications and core security settings, startup programs, scheduled tasks, running processes, drivers and services, DLLs loaded, internet history and more.

And if you're interested in diagnosing problems then there's also plenty on offer here, from basic tools such as the Event Log, to the Display Diagnostics module, and even an effective System Stability test to ensure your CPU, GPU, RAM and hard drives are in full working order.

You get much the same as this in AIDA64 Extreme Edition, of course, but the Business Edition has some useful network-oriented tricks of its own. The program can monitor what's happening all across your network, for instance, launching particular applications or services remotely, shutting down or restarting them, even taking full control of a remote system to run particular admin tasks or transfer files.

And perhaps most important of all, AIDA64 Business Edition doesn't simply display information on your network systems. It takes a snapshot each time, and can show you what's changed since last time, or even notify you via email when some aspect of a system has changed - a great timesaver for busy system administrators.

Please note, this trial version of the program has one notable restriction, in that it obscures some items in its report. When we click Computer > Summary on our test PC, say, it'll report "Operating System" as "Windows 7 Ultimate", but "OS Service Pack" appears only as "[TRIAL VERSION]", and you'll see the same "[TRIAL VERSION]" markers appear on some other pages, too. The trial displays more than enough information to get a feel for how the program works, though, and of course this restriction disappears once you purchase and enter your licence key.