I'd prefer Rob's approach and wouldn't mind seeing a good PowerShell script that does exactly what he described, there is an approach you could take in TSQL.
sp_configure is a built in system function that will allow you to display, or change, system settings. To see the basic listing you can run a query like this:
EXEC sp_configure;
That will show most of what you're interested in on a day to day basis. However, to get a complete listing, you need to show all the advanced settings. From the books online, run the script this way:
USE master; GO EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced option', '1'; RECONFIGURE; EXEC sp_configure;
That will show you everything. You can then output to a file or load it to a table in order to run comparisons on other data sets from other servers.