This snippet taken from The Definitive Guide to Building a Windows Server 2008 Infrastructure, a free e-book sponsored by Tricerat. Get your free copy of the entire 10-chapter bookhere.

Even with the over 2,500 individual settings that can now be configured with Group Policy, the nature of Group Policy itself may not fulfill all the needs of your Windows Server 2008 infrastructure. Due to their highly-customizable nature, IT infrastructures have traditionally made use of login scripts to handle the customized needs of their individual environment.

But there has always been a few issues with login scripts for these sorts of customizations. First, they are only processed at the time of login. If you desire a custom change to occur, you must first change the login script and then wait for each client to re-login in order for the change to process. Additionally, the coding of complex customizations can often be challenging using shell scripting or VBScript languages. In order to properly use login scripts, you need to learn these scripting languages and the best practices associated with their use.

Upon the release of Group Policy with Windows Server 2008 comes a much-desired new enhancement to Group Policy called Group Policy Preferences (GPPs). GPPs bring together much of the customization power of login scripts with the rich targeting and regular update capabilities of Group Policy.

Take a look through the settings found in the traditional Group Policy Administrative Templates. There, you'll find a significant level of ability to control the configuration of workstations and servers attached to your domain. But that configuration control is limited to just the areas that Microsoft has made available through the Administrative Templates. If you want to make your own customized changes that aren't already a part of a Group Policy setting, you're forced to code your own template using XML. This rather difficult process can make cumbersome the process of customization. GPPs overcome this limitation by making available a set of tools that allow for GUI-based customization of areas commonly handled through login scripts.

Take another look at any particular Group Policy within the GPME. Within the left pane of the tree view you will see that the both the Computer Configuration and the User Configuration nodes are further broken into two halves apiece. Each contains two top-level nodes titled Policies and Preferences. The Policies node is where traditional Group Policy settings are configured. The Preferences node is where preferences are enabled.

Check back tomorrow for the next part in the series!