It's Finally Here: PowerShell for Vista

Published: January 31, 2007

by Alex Woodie

At long last, it's finally here. After ages of development and oodles of beta testing, Windows users can finally get their hands on perhaps the biggest productivity boost to come out of Microsoft in years. Of course, we're talking about PowerShell, the new command-line environment for Windows, which became available for Windows Vista on Monday.

Windows PowerShell is a new command line shell and scripting language designed to enable systems administrators to complete repetitive tasks in a fraction of the amount of time it would take going through the traditional GUI. The software, which was formerly codenamed "Monad," was made available as a free download in November.

A number of tasks can be simplified with PowerShell, including monitoring server states, setting up and executing batch file transfers, extracting data from remote locations and formatting it in HTML or XML, and starting or stopping services and processes. The tool comes with dozens of building blocks, called "commandlets" (or Cmd-lets in PowerShell's *nix-like lingo), and enterprising users can create their own using the SDK.

Microsoft last week announced that PowerShell would be ready to work with Windows Vista by the time Vista shipped, which was officially yesterday. The software also works with certain builds of Windows Server "Longhorn," which is still in development.

To download PowerShell, check out www.microsoft.com/powershell.

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