What are the drawbacks to setting up a domain instead of a basic workgroup?

I have a network made up of 90 workstations running Windows XP Pro. As of now they're running as standalone user accounts. I would like to add a Windows 2003 server to the network that would centralize all user accounts and permissions. Before doing this I want to know if there's going to be any drawbacks to setting up a domain instead of a basic workgroup?
For the number of workstations and users that you're supporting, creating a centralized domain should greatly simplify the process of assigning user permissions and access on your network. However, as with any network change, you should create a test environment to be sure that a Windows Server 2003 domain will meet your needs before implementing it on your production network.

This was first published in March 2004

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