Starter GPOs contain settings that you would find in the Administrative Templates container of an ordinary GPO, in either the User Configuration section or the Computer Configuration section. Group policy objects contain three (or more) containers in each of the user and computer configuration Policies nodes:
• Software settings (for distributing software via GPOs)
• Windows settings (pretty much everything that isn’t a pure Registry setting)
• Administrative Templates (Registry-based policies)
Note the Preferences nodes in the figure below. These are new with Server 2008, and represent settings that a group policy administrator can suggest to users, but which users can override, unlike typical policies. Some preferences represent settings that cannot be made through the ordinary group policy process. Starter GPOs do not contain any preferences.
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Everything you need to know about Server 2008 Group Policy Objects (GPOs)
