Microsoft released a new and more powerful command line shell and task based scripting technology called Windows PowerShell today. Powershell brings in Unix style shell scripting to Windows Vista as well as Windows XP and Windows 2003 platforms.
Powershell supports features like pipelines(dir | more), allows you to quickly solve storage problems for instance how many 700MB cds are needed to backup 11GB? (11GBMB/700MB) Alex of Windows Vista blog has a more simple definition of Powershell.

He describes Powershell as “If you haven’t heard of Windows PowerShell before, think of it as an integrated version of the Windows Command Prompt (cmd.exe) and VBScript.”

You can use it to unleash the power of wildcards and working objects too. Say you wanted to get all the services that start with “a” and then get all the dependent services associated with it, simply typing “PS> get-service w* | format-list DisplayName, DependentServices” should do the job.
History: Before being released as Windows Powershell, it was previously known as Windows “Monad” Shell and MSH or Microsoft Command Shell.

Prerequisites: Windows PowerShell requires the .Net Framework 2.0. You can download Framework 2.0 here.

New Features/ can do with Win PowerShell:
1. You can test your commands before committing to them(use feature called Whatif )
2. You can start and stop transcripts of all your commands
3. Can use Win Pow to access applications such as Windows Media Player 11
4. Can configure the much hated User Account Control (set-itemproperty -path HKLM:SOFTWAREMICROSOFTWINDOWSCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem -name ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin -value 0) where a 0 will turn of UAC and 2 will turn it back on.

You can download Windows PowerShell from Microsoft for Windows Vista, XP, 2003 from here.

written by Florin C.