After creating a new GPO and then heading into Group Policy Management Editor in order to put some settings inside that GPO, you will notice that both the Computer Configuration and User Configuration sections of Group Policy have two main tiers of settings. There are true Policies, which we have been working with so far, and then each node also contains a Preferences folder, which includes many other settings. You can see the distinction in the following screenshot:
Policies force things to happen, no matter what the user wants. Preferences, on the other hand, are often reversible by the user. So preferences are a good way of configuring settings that will make life easier for the user, but you need to ultimately be OK with the fact that those changes and settings could be changed again manually by the user, if they want to...