One thing I used to like with Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) was being able to use TweakUI to set up Auto login for the password protected user on the machine.... bypassed the login screen and let the machine start up in Media Center straight away.

With Vista I couldn't find an equivalent utility when I first upgraded the Media Center (from MCE to VMC) so had to leave a keyboard plugged in... a bit sub-optimal!

Luckily thanks to the Windows Core folks who blog at Shell:Revealed I discovered their Autologon utility. No messing around with the registry or anything complicated, and it even stores your password securely.

One extra nice feature is you can set it to only perform the auto login a certain number of times so if you want the machine to become secure after (say) a guest has used it the second restart will demand the password again.