Hi there,
I guess you're really after some feedback from existing users rather than an official response. However, since there has been no feedback so far to your email I have provided my own thoughts to your points below.
1.) Need to ba able to hide and unhide a running program window using a hot-key.
There are no commands in Macro Scheduler to HIDE a window. You can close, minimise, restore or maximise windows, move them off screen, resize them, but no provision to hide the window from the task bar. That said it would be easy enough to make a command to do this or run a command line utility to do it, but it would need to be used carefully!
2.) I need to pop up reminders.
Simple.
3.) I need to automatically send an email based on an event, i.e., user has logged on (XP Pro) or file has changed.
It is easy to send an email from a script using the SMTPSendMail function. Scripts can be set up to monitor a file size and send the email if it has changed etc.
As for detecting whether a user has logged on - do you mean to the local machine or on the network? If the latter it should be possible. If the former, this would be trickier but it may be possible by running Macro Scheduler as a service and watching for a file change or something that happens when the user logs in. Running scripts as services can be tricky in that you can only interract within the same security context. Therefore since the script has to run under one specific account - usually the system account - and the user is another - you may not have a way for each to know of each other.
4.) I would like to be able to gracefully log-off a user who shares the same computer, but just selected "switch user" (XP Pro) and left the system.
Similar answer to above. Might not be possible. The console is not present when the user has 'logged off' or suspended and you also have a different security context. Not sure how this could be done. Might be a way to do it with VBScript.
5.) I would like to be able to ping several web sites and log the results.
Easy. Not a problem.
6.) I want the ability to automate routine things like using a hot-key to type my email address or open IE and go to a specific web site or fill in a form.
Easy. Simple. You'll see loads of examples of that kind of thing here in this forum or at our scripts & tips page etc.
7.) I would like to run tasks (not sure what can be done) while no one is logged in on XP Pro.
Some tasks can be automated while no user is logged in. Some can't. This relates to my answers to points 3 and 4 and is addressed at:
http://www.mjtnet.com/index.mv?msfaq6.html
The best approach is to create .exe files and run these as services. Then if you need more than one task and different tasks require different logon credentials you can run each service as different users. That gets round the problem of communication within security contexts. What will NOT work while the machine is logged out is GUI automation. What I mean by that is user simulation such as sending keystrokes, mouse events and any window handling. Why? Because the console and windows do not exist when the machine is logged out. See above FAQ for more details.
I'd say the split between users purchasing the compiler version and non-compiler version is about 60/40 in favour of the compiler version. As for why this is I guess that's for them to answer ....
