"You can patch all day, but what happens when a user logs in before getting the latest updates?" Henson said. He added that NAP was a feature his manager "had been asking Microsoft for for a long time."

Pioneer uses SMS 2003 Service Pack 1 to oversee 1,600 client PCs and 400 servers in Irving and worldwide.

Beta 2 of SMS v4 is due this quarter, with a a final version due late next year, about the same time that Windows Longhorn Server, the successor to Windows Server 2003, ships in the second half of next year.

Microsoft also showed enhanced group policy security features in Windows Vista that managers will be able to create in SMS v4. To drive home one point, Muglia grabbed an epoxy gun during a demonstration and filled in the Universal Serial Bus ports on a PC -- a measure he claimed some companies are doing to prevent employees from plugging in USB flash drives and possibly stealing or taking home sensitive data.

Microsoft demonstrated Powershell, a command-line interface formerly code-named Monad. Powershell is similar to Unix shells but is based on object-oriented programming and is integrated into .Net. In a demonstration, Microsoft showed how commands typed into Powershell map exactly to functions performed using a mouse under the graphical interface, and vice-versa. Powershell is expected in the fall.