So my question is this: is this a standard thing in a large operation or is this as unreasonable as it feels?

Technically, I suppose I support "mid-sized" rather than "large", but we definately wipe rather than "upgrade" an OS. There are too many weird (i before e...?) things installed on computers that don't upgrade cleanly, and we spend way too much time as it is trying to chase them down under normal circumstances.

We'd much rather have a "clean" starting point moving forward, and hope that the users won't install as much junk this time (or, perhaps, they'll install "new and improved" junk ). We're in the event management business, and can't really lock down the computer as the last minute, show-must-go-on stuff takes precedence.

-jk