Bummer. Is there a way to set it so anyone hitting the site gets a cached page within the time set that the page is cached? I’m not doing comments or logins, just want to serve mostly static pages.
No, you’re not understanding. The pages are static either way, the difference is in how they are static.
Normally, WordPress’s pages show different things to logged in users. The comments form, for example, will often show the users name and not force him to type in his email address and such. You want each user to get his own pages correctly, which is why WP-Cache handles it. WP-Cache still uses static pages and does not hit the database, but it does run some PHP. This allows it to recognize the user cookie and serve the correct static page from the cache folder.
Anonymous users, on the other hand, don’t get any customizations. This is where the super cache kicks in. It redirects them to a static page without ever launching any PHP code. If you’re not doing logins, then most users will see the Super-Cache page.
Both ways are still “static” in that it never talks to the database (unless the static page hasn’t been built yet or needs to be refreshed). Both give a major speed enhancement.
If you want to make the caches last longer so that the refreshes don’t happen as often, adjust the numbers for the two caches on the super cache configuration page. The default is to allow the WP-Cache to refresh after 1 hour and to allow the WP-Super-Cache to refresh after 6 hours.