Hello,

I work for an AV company (powerpoint conferences up to massive awards ceremonies).
Our laptops have been progressing more and more into an inconsistent (and often unreliable) state, and I have been tasked with setting up a system to ensure they go out the door in a 'perfect' state every time.

I am considering using `recimg` in order to deal with this in the short term (create a general image with all the software we want, reinstall it across our laptops, then create an image per laptop).
However, this is going to be very tedious when it comes to new updates & rolling out new software.

As far as I can tell, Windows remote deployment systems are meant for provisioning new computers or rolling out sweeping changes... not the weekly (possibly daily when we are busy) re-imaging of a laptop.

Am I right in thinking, if I were to set up a golden image with a MAK, I will chew through the amount of allowed activations very quickly?
Is this something KMS is designed for?
Is there a better way to go about this?
Do I just need to accept that any updates/new software is going to require a lot of work, and stick with recimg?

TL;dr:
Hire laptops going out weekly/daily need to be in a fresh state.
Using a single generalized thick image to reinstall (and activate) Windows 8.1 (and Office 2013) multiple times per week on multiple machines, making updating/installing software easy.
How should I approach this?

Well to start off you could use something free like MDT to make the gold image and than deploy it to the new laptop.

Using MDT you get a task sequence that automatically does the software update (many way to configure this using WSUS or Microsoft directly).

If you change company software often than make the gold image a thin one and deploy the application during the process.

I strongly suggest using KMS to active all windows that come out of MDT this is the easy way of doing things.

Read this article on technet will give you a step by step to deploy windows 8.1 using MDT 2013 :https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn744279.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Unfortunately we only have ~15 laptops at the moment (altho we are growing fast). KMS isnt applicable until 25 units, I believe.

How would the Windows Activation work with re-imaging the laptops frequently from a generalised image?  
Will it recognise it is the same laptop, or does it have a counter (so you can only re-image it 5 times)?
I fear that I will set up a system that seems to work fine in testing, but when it goes into operation, it works great the first 10 times, and then I invalidate 15 Windows & Office licenses :|.

Well if you have 5 servers they will activate via KMS and would allow the windows to be activated.

For MAK it's a bit tricky this is something you need to talk directly to your license provider.