I have a small set (currently 3, going to 6, not going to be more than 10) of (virtual, vmware workstation) Windows XP machines. They are similar but not exactly the same.
I'm currently rolling out Windows updates, etc., by hand: start machine 1, update, close, etc; I'd like to review the updates first before the clients can install them. Incidentally there are also other updates to be performed: changes some files on all machines, install new Java versions, etc.
What's a good way of doing this automatically? I tried to search for this but things like Active Directory seem overkill to me.