Terminal Services
Terminal Services is one of the best additions to the Windows Server family. In my network, we use Terminal Services for many aspects of our business. Terminal Services in Windows 2000 workes well except for anything dealing with graphics. The Windows .NET Server family fixes that, as you will seealong with some other enhancements to Terminal Services.
Color and Resolution Improvements
Within Terminal Services for Windows 2000, you were limited to 256 colors, which was sufficient for basic utilities and standard office-based applications. To use higher-end applications or Web browsers, 256 colors is not sufficient. With .NET Server, the user now has the ability to set the color depth from 16 colors to True Color, and the resolution can be set from 640x480 to whatever is the highest level that is supported by the client system.
Group Policy Integration
With Windows 2000, you had the capability to set some policies for the user that logs onto the server, but the controlling of the server itself was not an easy task. With .NET Server, group policies are now easier to implement. The administrator now has the ability to enforce the redirection capabilities, password access, and wallpaper settings on the server itselfas well as anybody that connects to it. We no longer have to control the user itself. Group policies might be different when the user connects straight to the network versus connecting through Terminal Services. This now gives us the ability for that control.
Audio Redirection
With previous versions of Terminal Services, a local user had no sound capabilities with the native version of Terminal Services. With .NET servers, the client now can reproduce sound with any application that attempts to play a .wav sound within the Terminal Server session.