How do you recommend business' manage their windows workstations then? Active Directory is extremely powerful in this sense. Other tools that work with/along side of active directory are also useful. As I stated earlier, RIS is one of these. Using windows servers to decrease administration tasks and reliability of desktops (yes, through group policies so that users dont destroy critical files, etc) is not "unintelligent".

Its all about using the right thing for the job, and its nice to be able to save money wherever possible.