WSUS questions

yea its not a bad program, and this will simplify my life! what are your intervals? like how often do your clients contact the WSUS server? For testing purposes I had it set for an hour, now that I want to bring it out into the open on our network, I would like to follow some "best practices". And your right on the PC organization, but I set it up in a group policy that when computer X from the group contacts the WSUS server it will go in y group.

Just to echo what Spephanie said, make sure you control what updates it applies by being vigilant on release/approval. If you just let it loose it will apply everything Microsoft sees fit to send down and that might not be good. We have a group of PCs, for example, that are so critical to the customer that we have to test every update to make sure the apps in use still work before we apply them in live. Plus there's the bloatware, Microsoft Genuine Disadvantage, new versions of IE etc and you might not want those either

One thing that's bothered me about WSUS has been the speed of the interface. Is it me or does it seem a bit sluggish? I know that the interface basically reads the information from a database, but is it supposed to be slow? I'll change from one node to another or drill down on something and it'll take a while to show up and populate the graphs and the related data.

The times that I've run WSUS have been in labs, and the databases have been locally stored and have been non-SQL server-based. I thought it was the computer I was running it on but then I installed it on a more powerful computer (2GB RAM, 3Ghz CPU) and still experienced this. I also wasn't handling a lot of patches or computers.

In the grand-scheme of things the sluggish interface isn't a big deal because WSUS still gets the job done but I'm just wondering if that's just the way WSUS is or what.

I have heard about , MS SUS (Software Update Service) and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
are they same or different ?
which of the above is free ?
please explain

They're the same and they are free. I believe it was originally called WUS (pernounced wuss and then MS changed the name to WSUS. The joke is that Microsoft would not tolerate one of its products being called a "wuss" so they renamed it. You can download it freely and install it on a server.

In a 2003 server domain ,is it possible to use GPO (group policy-AD) to push .exe files and other installation files (non .msi files) to clients systems ??????
if it is possible please explain!!