How can I replicate an install efficiently?

I am trying to install Ubuntu 13.04 on three sets of machines. All are 64 bit laptops, but the hardware is different. I assume that different drivers will get installed as the operating system installation proceeds.

I have set up my own laptop with all the utilities and applications I want. I don't want to have to manually repeat that process, and I don't want to forget to install anything. So what I would most like to do is tar up all files not in the basic install and after completing an install, add all those files in a single shot to all three machines. If that's not possible, the next most desirable outcome would be to be able to build a script that installs everything that is installed on my system. All the code I installed from source is on /opt and I could presumably handle that with tar:

tar -czf opt.tgz /opt

Finally, when I have three perfect builds on each kind of hardware, I would like to replicate that to all machines. And since those machines all unfortunately have to have Windows as well for those few software packages that can't run in Ubuntu, I need to copy both partitions. I am aware of ghost, which is proprietary (but which we own) and clonezilla, which is open source and I have never used. If anyone has a recommendation on these or any other tool, it would be greatly appreciated.