Today's Windows NT desktop is a nightmare to manage in a large—or even moderately sized—environment. If you're not dealing with issues of DLL conflicts, lack of registrations for globally unique IDs (GUIDs), or keeping software installed and updated in a way that doesn't require user intervention, you're trying to figure out how to build a different desktop for each user class. Microsoft's Systems Management Server (SMS) 2.0 begins to tackle management issues, but some key pieces are missing or are difficult to implement in a large environment.

Thi...