title: Practical Alternative for Windows Scheduled Tasks (small shop)
body: <p>I work in a very small shop (2 people), and since I started a few months back we have been relying on Windows Scheduled tasks.  Finally, I've decided I've had enough grief with some of its inabilities such as</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>No logs that I can find except on a domain level (inaccessible to machine admins who aren't domain admins)</li>
  <li>No alerting mechanism (e-mail, for one) when the job fails.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Once again, we are a small shop.  I'm looking to do the analogous scheduling system upgrade than I'm doing with source control (VSS --> Subversion).  I'm looking for suggestions of systems that </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Are able to do the two things outlined above</li>
  <li>Have been community-tested.  I'd love to be a guinae pig for exciting software, but job scheduling is not my day job.</li>
  <li>Ability to remotely manage jobs a plus</li>
  <li>Free a plus.  Cheap is okay, but I have very little interest in going through a full blown sales pitch with 7 power point presentations.</li>
  <li>Built-in ability to run common tasks besides .EXE's a (minor) plus (run an assembly by name, run an Excel macro by name a plus, run a database stored procedure, etc.).</li>
  </ol>