My company is looking into using automated GUI testing for our current app before proceeding to alpha. Our current main focus is robustness testing, one way we want to achieve this is automated UI testing that can be repeated over several hours/days.

For our desktop version we've decided on AutomationElement, and I've seen several free open source frameworks. For .NET CF the options seem more limited. I found [M-eux Test](http://www.jamosolutions.com/documents/meuxtest.html), but the license fee is a little bit steep. I also found [Test Complete 7](http://www.automatedqa.com/products/testcomplete/), which I am planning on looking into.

The tests will be written by programmers. Support for being able to affect specific UI elements would be nice, although a simple record/playback may be satisfactory for our current needs.

Developing for Windows Mobile 5.0. Support for Windows CE would be nice, but not required.

Has anyone been in this situation before? Any tools that you recommend? Any best practices I should be aware about?