The photojournalists at my current job use the excellent Photo Mechanic software from Camera Bits as part of their workflow, version 4.6.9 in our case. Since Photo Mechanic uses Installer VISE for installation, you can silently install the software following the steps outlined over on Constantine Krick’s blog.

The short version is to run the following from the command prompt to generate an .INI settings file for VISE to use:
[cc]PMSetup4.6.9.exe -r: settings.ini[/cc]

Once you have the resulting settings.ini file, you can run:
[cc]PMSetup4.6.9.exe -p: settings.ini[/cc]

This will install Photo Mechanic silently. Of course, this assumes settings.ini is in the same working directory as the Photo Mechanic executable.

The content of my settings.ini file is below:
[cc]
[Destination]
TargetDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Camera Bits\Photo Mechanic 4.6
[SelectPackage]
PackageFlags=0100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
[/cc]

In my environment, which consists of mixed 32-bit and 64-bit Windows installations, I actually have two settings.ini files — each one pointing to the correct Program Files directory.

Unfortunately, Photo Mechanic still requires manual activation. At the least, however, the software can be put onto machines without bothering clients.