Just a little background... I am a desktop support tech at my organization responsible for roughly 400-500 client computers at 4 separate locations. We are running a Novell NetWare shop with Windows XP clients mostly along with some Windows Vista clients.

Our newest shipment of workstations are HPs with vPro. I've read up on some white papers about how to actually enable and use vPro utilities, but haven't been able to get anything working. I'm actually at a loss as far as how to put this technology to use and it's a shame. We have roughly 100 vPro capable workstations and would love to actually put them to work for us.

Some distinct questions I would like answered:

Just about all of your white papers on this site here seem to be based around integrating AMT with a 3rd party management console. My organization does not use Altiris, LANDesk, or Microsoft SMS. I've seen videos of people using the free tools that Intel offers. Do these work stand-alone? I'm especially interested in AMT commander.

Where do I actually start with this stuff? What software needs to be installed on the client?

I have a workstation running Windows Vista with all drivers for AMT installed, AMT service running, and another workstation running AMT commander console. The console doesn't discover the workstation. AMT commander isn't allowing me to connect even after manually adding the workstation. Where am I going wrong?

What are some good white papers that I can read up on? I've mostly found just white papers that go on about the TCO and other stuff that is more relevant to IT managers. I want to know the stuff that is for the guys that will actually configure this stuff.