[bostonsre]

Have you tried powershell? I haven't used it in a while, but it was straightforward to automate stuff while being in complete control of what was happening. The object oriented aspect of it lent itself very well to object introspection and seemed pretty intuitive.

[merb]

powershell is okish, but installing. tools with it packaged in different formats with different installers and differnt options sucks.