gathering some opinions

[eight02645999 at yahoo.com]

hi
i am working on cgi and wish to gather some input on correct/often used
methods of what i am going to do.
I need to let the user choose (in the form of check boxes) whether they
need the data to be emailed to them periodically. So if they click the
check box on "activate", then email system will start.
I was thinking of creating schedular jobs after they click "activate".
In windows, i have read the demos of creating a job in task schedular
using the win32 modules..In unix, i am not sure how yet, but i will do
more research. The main thing is, is this the only way ? Sometimes,
there is not enough privlege to create jobs and things like that...
anyone has done such a setup before?what are other better approach?
thanks for any suggestions and inputs...