In Windows Server 2008 R2 they've finally implemented something that should have been done long ago.  Managed Service Accounts.  This is a great idea and it will make administration of service accounts much easier.  I work in an environment where NERC regulations require us change our passwords on everything at least every year, including service accounts.  How many of us just set service accounts to password never expires and never attempt to change it because we don't want the service to break.  Now we have an option with Managed Service Accounts.  How well it works, I'll let you know.  

One thing to look for when using these new service accounts:

• The automatic password management only works with Windows services.  So if you have an application that internally stores a username and password, you may find your application will stop working when Windows changes it.  So be careful when you define a service account as such as you may find out the hard way with an outage.