Repeating to do items?

If I have a to-do item to remind myself to do each week, is there an easy way to create a repeating to-do item that appears every week?

The only way I've found to do this is to create a single to-do item, duplicate it, and then change the date to one week later. However, if I want to do this task every week for a year this would be way too laborious. Any suggestions? I know one can create repeating events, but this doesn't help to remind me to do a task as it doesn't carry over into the next day if I haven't completed the to-do item (designated by checking a box as I can do when it appears in the to-do list).

This appears to be a significant shortcoming of iCal relative to Palm's calendar software which I just transitioned from.