So I often spend lots of time away from my work network, and today I'm at the office, and I've logged on to the network just fine. However, I've heard that in Windows 7, I can associate a local profile that I've had with my domain name.
How can I do this, so I don't have two bloody profiles? I just want one login (my domain), and I'd like to use the local profile that I've been using, rather than try to migrate everything and set all my preferences again.
You can copy your local profile over your domain profile using windows easy transfer: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/easy-transfer.aspx
Once that is done, you can use your domain log in even if you are not connected to the work network. Windows will cache your credentials and allow you to use that log in.
You may need IT to set your domain account as a local administrator on the laptop.
I'm not sure if this is the answer for your question because it's not specific to Windows 7, in fact we used it on Windows XP machines, but I remember using a utility in the past called VMover.exe (it may have been a purchased utility from Qwest) which would link 2 profiles within Windows. This allowed us to migrate many users from one AD domain to another without having to rebuild all of their Windows profiles. When their domains were changed programatically, it still allowed them to log into their original Windows profile. It basically linked the new domain profile to the old domain profile.
This same procedure may work for local and domain profiles within Windows but I'm not positive.
