Before last week, about all I knew about Windows PowerShell is that it was supposed to ship in Vista but didn't.  That changed when I attended an internal Microsoft talk by Dr. James McCaffrey, Ultra-Lightweight Software Test Automation using PowerShell (presumably adapted from his upcoming PNSQC talk, Ultra-Lightweight Software Test Automation in an agile environment).  McCaffrey was an engaging speaker and the presentation was great in that he didn't try to pour as much into it as possible.  Rather, he gave us enough of a taste to make the topic compelling and pointed to resources where we could learn more.  That day, I grabbed the one PowerShell book I could find on Safari and started going through it.  It was really easy to see the possibilities of the technology in only a few hours.  I'll be doing more investigation on PowerShell, including reading Bruce Payette's book which, based on the comments on Amazon looks pretty good.  More later...