Very good post. Just wanted to add one thing about the shutdown command. The only way that works remotely is if either everyone is allowed to shutdown the PC or you have a duplicate account on two different PC's. For security I recommend that you have it to where only a certain user be able to shutdown the computer remotely. To do this go to the group policy editor(type gpedit.msc in the run prompt) and navigate to this directory: computer configuration>windows settings>security settings>local policies>user rights assignment
and change the "force shutdown from remote system" to have the user you want to be able to shut it down remotely. Then go to www.systernals.com and download the psshutdown utility. This will allow you to specify a username and password for a remote shutdown.