Reddit mentions of Deployment Fundamentals, Vol. 1: Migrating to Windows 7 using MDT 2010 Lite Touch and WDS

Another vote for MDT. It can be fairly straightforward to set up, but if you want to start messing with multiple makes/models and thick/thin/hybrid images, it can take a while. I've worked with MDT for 3+ years, and it's very flexible and powerful. It's got me my last two jobs, as both places were looking for Imaging/MDT specialists. It's a great tool to have under your belt. And it's free, so you'll get kudos for that.

I recommend reading anything and everything Johan Arwidmark has ever written. He's really the grandaddy of MDT/SCCM and deployment.

If you're looking to start messing with MDT, check out this book by Johan Arwidmark:

Deployment Fundamentals, Vol. 1: Migrating to Windows 7 using MDT 2010 Lite Touch and WDS

It literally will guide you through setting up MDT and WDS from scratch and get you deploying images. Well worth the investment.

Get this book (it's for 2010 but still applies to 2013):

https://www.amazon.com/Deployment-Fundamentals-Vol-Migrating-Windows/dp/1451570031/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1502908308&sr=8-3&keywords=deployment+fundamentals+volume

It will tell you everything you need to know. Once you get the basics down you can then start looking into database driven deployments (also covered in the book) so you can install software packages based on any number of factors such as department, user name .... almost anything.

Edit: spelling and as others have pointed out... SCCM is not at all necessary to do what you need.

As other suggested disk2vhd is a great idea.
Personally, I also use USMT and i never had an issue with it so far!
I have a shared folder accessible from the network, i log with an admin account on the laptop that i need to re-image, click an HTML page in that shared folder that fires up a basic MDT sequence just to run USMT, it saves automatically all users settings and folders (even folders outside My Documents, bookmarks, outlook profile, PST files, it even saves the group membership of the user so if he is local admin he will be local admin on the refreshed PC...) and save it to a network share. There is even an option to do a full backup but that's too much space for me.

It really makes things so much easier. All user files and settings are saved in one location, then i start a normal MDT task to image the computer and give the location of the USMT file, the laptop is re-imaged and at the end of the deployment all user settings and files are restored.

Abit more info there: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj127984.aspx

Also, this book http://www.amazon.com/Deployment-Fundamentals-Vol-Migrating-Windows/dp/1451570031 is where i found the HTML trick to fire up USMT. I advise this book a lot (i don't know the guys, i am not advertising them) but the