In the above, it is mentioned that you should create views to access your linked servers. That is good, but I would go one step further and define synonyms for the objects on the linked server you use regularly (SQL Server 2005 and greater). I would also create those synonyms in a different schema - just to separate things:

CREATE SCHEMA LinkedServer AUTHORIZATION dbo;

GO

CREATE SYNONYM LinkedServer.ObjectName FOR LinkedServer.Database.schema.object;

GO

Then, it can be used as:

SELECT * FROM LinkedServer.ObjectName;

One advantage to this approach is that you could easily modify the synonyms and redirect them to a different linked server. For example:

DROP SYNONYM LinkedServer.ObjectName;

CREATE SYNONYM LinkedServer.ObjectName FOR LinkedServer2.Database.schema.object;

GO

Now using 'SELECT * FROM LinkedServer.ObjectName' will select data from LinkedServer2 instead of LinkedServer.

Jeff