thefluxster

I would suggest using TightVNC - it offers various levels of encryption and it's 100% free - no need to worry about "upgrading" to features you might need - they're included for free. I currently use this version myself and have found it extremely easy to use/configure.

vbscript may be a viable option, now that I think about it. The only question then is how well it would be able to handle automating the installation of several programs in a row, including any necessary reboots.

First off, ME is the best thing I've found for automation in a long time and I use it every day for work. I recently ran across AutoIT and found that it doesn't really do anything I can't already accomplish with ME and since my fellow co-workers are more inclined to edit something in a GUI than in a script, we're sticking with ME, despite the cost. However, one feature it does have that I would REALLY like to see in ME is the ability to compile the scripts to .exe format to be run on ANY computer (with or without ME installed). This is handy, especially for setting up new machines with the myriad of programs we require at the office. Since ME doesn't have this ability (the .mxe files are alright, but you need a player to get them to run), I'm wondering if there are any ME to AutoIT script converters out there that could convert our ME scripts to AutoIT format to be compiled to EXE? Maybe it's a stretch, especially considering differences in code structure, but I thought I'd ask the experts first. Thanks.

ME is GREAT for large scale network automation, as I found while working at Novell in their 2000+ computer "SuperLab" as an intern 6 years ago. We used ME for real-life network stress testing. Each row of computers would be doing random sets of tasks using everything from browsing, email and database access. It was like have 2000 employees all working on different things on the network at once. Kind of eerie, actually - seeing all those computers humming away at things we consider purely *human*.

All, Your ideas for this random number generator are great! I'll definitely implement portions of this process in my own macros. Using Notepad with the "TextType" function seems to work fine for the first few thousand numbers... However, if the number sequences get very long or if the list of numbers gets very long, it seems to start spitting out a lot of incorrect numbers - almost as if the <ENTER> function isn't being added correctly. To get around this, you can do one of two things: 1. insert the "Wait Text Playback" command after the "Text Type" command (which will, of course, DRASTICALLY slow down the macro) 2. output your data to a text file. Either way, if the list of numbers you are generating is very large, it seems to take forever to compare newly generated numbers against the existing list. Perhaps someone would take up the challenge to increase the speed of this macro by making it use an array, or better yet, a little recursion!