Windows PowerShell is a great new object-oriented shell with lots of new features. Many Microsoft products will leverage the functions of the new shell, like Exchange Server 2007 and Virtual Machine Manager. They do that by creating cmdlets that do the configuration and then build a UI that calls these cmdlets under the hood. The great thing is that the UI shows the cmdlet and the parameters of the cmdlets so you can reuse them in your own scripts.

Because learning a new shell like PowerShell can be daunting, some help is needed in the form of books and tools. Sapien Technologies have released a book, Microsoft PowerShell: TFM, to help climb the steep learning curve. They also have support for PowerShell in PrimalScript 4.1, a visual development environment for various scripting languages.

Take a look at www.primalscript.com for more info.