Because i am adding 2 new media centers to my home network over the next couple of weeks, and becuase i have a Active Directory setup and running in-house, and also because i want to use WSUS for updates on said machines (plus a third one my sister owns) and (final reason) because i dont want all machines to always ask for a password to login, i went looking for information on how to get machines to auto login. I found this KB article on the issue. So now i can get all machines to join the network, set them to login automagically, and they should all be good to go! hopefully it is actually this simple!