Managing one computer can be difficult, but connect a few systems in a network and your problems rapidly multiply.

Network Inventory Advisor is a professional tool which can help by providing detailed reports on all Windows, Mac and Linux computers, along with other network devices. It’s free for small networks of up to 10 nodes, and licenses for larger setups start from $89.

The program doesn’t require any agents to be installed on the remote systems, and as long as you’ve an account with administrator experience on each computer, doesn’t need any particular network expertise. You don’t even have to specify an IP address range, just accept the Enumeration Wizard’s defaults and Network Inventory Advisor will scan each of your systems.

The end results are displayed in a “Network Structure tree”, and clicking any of the computers and devices displays more information.

There are detailed reports on the hardware and software of your remote computers

We found the program displayed plenty of hardware details on our test Windows systems: CPU, motherboard, RAM, drives (including free and used space), video and network devices, graphics, sound, printer and more.

There’s also IP and MAC address, assorted Windows details (version, service pack, installed patches, user accounts) and a full inventory of your software, including installed applications, some product keys, Windows startup programs and more.

It’s a powerful tool, and these initial reports are just the start. Run another scan some time later – a day, a week, a month – and the program highlights anything that’s changed. You can then scan just those (hopefully) few lines, making it much easier to pick up on any potential problems.

Network Inventory Advisor is a shareware network audit tool, free for small networks, and available for Windows and Mac.