The real news here is the CreateScheduledTask[] and related functions. "...I could use an infinite loop, but that would lock my Mathematica completely. I might

The real news here is the CreateScheduledTask[] and related functions. "...I could use an infinite loop, but that would lock my Mathematica completely. I might want to run overnight computations at the same time, or have other events happen periodically, so instead I program a scheduled interrupt (another new capability) that will suspend any running Mathematica program, run this command, and then return to the program." Mathematica hasn't previously had a way to manage a long-running process by itself. For a long time this would have been accomplished by calling Mathematica kernel from another program using a linking library. Not very difficult but it still would have been another step. Now it's built in. Cool.