Every product has to have a gimmick strong point to make it sell.  Same as
products that do Exchange mailbox level backup/restore, etc.  The reality is
this feature sounds good on paper, but in practicality is probably not
useable for corporate users.  Just like compression in many cases which you
would think would always make sense.  This is playing on the backup issue of
so much data, but the management of the data is likely unwieldy.  I think it
could provide benefit for desktops that are deployed and reducing the amount
of storage space to store the information.  But, why even do that.  A
corporate image is used for everything these days.  So, do not back it up at
all and rebuild from the corporate image.  The concept of My documents and
settings is the answer, why?  Everyone does an upgrade every 3 years anymore
and you have to reinstall/move your data then.  If done right, the My
documents and settings approach can solve so many problems like this.  So,
look at the issue, if you have 10,000 users and there is 3GB, 20000 files of
identical image.  That is 30TB and 200,000,000 files.  Every backup you will
have to look at 200M entries to see if they are the same and you will have
to manage at least 300 tapes to hold that, and at what expense?  This
problem is resolved with a little discipline.

Some day Microsoft will fix this and the "linklist" on the image will be
read only meaning there will be a image stamp for the programs and OS.  All
data will be stored in "user storage".  That is the way the mainframe has
worked for years.  The catalogs to where the data, the security database,
and the user data volumes are all that are needed on a backup in a cloned
MVS world now.  One image fits all.  Like mainframes, the wantabies will
figure out the value while the dinosaur moseys along having a nice day.

But you wouldn't find that in a PC magazine.