Microsoft actually has some cool shit

What I discovered out of boredom today at Microsoft.com:

PowerShell: a powerful command line based scripting tool for Windows. It has it's own admin-focused scripting language too!

SteadyState: this is what comes in handy when you need to administer a lot of accounts, eg: on a school network. Simple GUI based program to do some nifty stuff.

Remote Desktop: turns out there's a web version, which you simply upload to an IIS-based web server and then it's accessible through the net! That's what I understood at least.

Some useful hot fixes for Windows XP (search the MS Knowledge Base for the article number):

if you have more than 1GB of RAM, you're probably having problems hibernating, going into standby etc - KB909095

If you have processors, and are having performance issues - KB896256

Get better battery life! Some patches for USB device handling - KB918005

Microsoft ERD Commander 2005 (Diagnostics & Recovery) - This is the coolest thing ever! A GUI based recovery console for XP. The command line recovery option you get thru the XP setup never really worked out anyway. This one ain't free though, all the others are.