Microsoft recently released an updated version of the PowerShell Quick Reference Guide. Essentially, it is a printable booklet that has an overview of commonly used PowerShell commands. So, if you’re learning PowerShell or just need a helpful reminder, check it out.

By the way, I cannot stress enough how useful PowerShell can be when working in a Windows Server environment. It really is worth learning even if it isn’t something you plan on using on a daily basis. If you don’t know it, now is a good time to start!

I am finally getting around to installing Windows 7 on my laptop. Before I wipe everything I wanted to have an idea of what I currently have installed. So, I put together a little PowerShell script:

Get-WMIObject Win32_product | sort-object vendor | format-table name, version, vendor, caption -autosize | out-file installed.txt -width 250

It is a pretty simple example. It uses the Win32_product WMI class to get a list of installed application. I then sort by vendor, format as a table, and output to a text file. As I said, pretty simple.