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Originally posted by Aaron Parker these are some very nice white papers on Group Policy.  A good read for any AD administrator.

Advanced Group Policy Management Overview

This white paper is an overview of Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM), and describes its benefits, how it works, and the next steps for evaluating it. AGPM helps you better manage Group Policy objects (GPOs) in your environment by providing change control, offline editing, and role-based delegation. AGPM is a key component of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

Group Policy Preferences Overview

This white paper introduces Group Policy preferences, a feature new in Microsoft Windows Server 2008, and describes how you can use Group Policy preferences to better deploy and manage operating system and application settings. Group Policy preferences enable information technology professionals to configure, deploy, and manage operating system and application settings they previously were not able to manage using Group Policy. Examples include mapped drives, scheduled tasks, and Start menu settings. For many types of operating system and application settings, using Group Policy preferences is a better alternative to configuring them in Windows images or using logon scripts.