This is a more complex problem than what scripting language you are going to use. Automating things is about job management, process management, signals, connecting streams and terminals, setting device modes, filesystem permissions, modifying network settings, and many other things. Unix is designed in a way that lets you change almost every property of the system in numerous ways, following general principles of its architecture. It is a very logical and consistent system.

The problem is that Windows lacks such an modular, abstract foundation. It is a much more arbitrary and inflexible system, it is not designed for putting different pieces of it together in different ways for automation.
For example, on Unix you have numerous small utilities that work together nicely by piping the output of one utility into the input of another one. Windows is really bad at doing such things, and the output format of most of its utilities is not easily machine parseable.

I think, the question is not: How do I automate Windows? The question should be: What system should I use, which one is good at automation?
And the answer is definately Unix, not Windows.

I just tried to post that to MS' TechNet article, but it seems that the comment function has been disabled. So I am posting it here as an open letter to MS.

Two ot the most ridiculous so-called patents:

"Enable display of a webpage’s content before the background image is received"
"Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection"

How is that a patent-worthy innovation? Just about EVERY application that has ever been created works like that, and any programmer that writes code different from what has been described in these patents should really look for a new job.

If Microsoft thinks that this is not "standard practice", but patent-worthy innovation, then this only proves that Microsoft's software designers and programmers must have below-average abilities.

I request that you folks stop trolling the rest of the world with such ridiculous claims immediately. If you want to compete, then work on increasing your skills instead of trying to forbid other people to make use of theirs.

"Learn how to create cutting-edge 3D animations like Pixar and Dreamworks in the next 2 hours or less..."

Well, if that IllusionMage homepage had slashdot's "score" feature, this statement would certainly deserve a "+5: funny". They can't be serious!? I've never seen anyone who has created something more exciting than a couple of textured spheres and cubes in no more than 2 hours after starting to use Blender for the very first time.