PowerGUI

Administering systems and managing network components locally and remotely are specialized tasks better left in the hands of professionals who certainly have the appropriate tools for doing a good job.

However, several Windows components are reserved for users who are curious and ambitious to get the job done themselves, such as PowerShell. Since it's only available through the command-line shell, some users may find it difficult.

To overcome this issue, you need a graphical interface like the one provided by Dell/Quest PowerGUI. This utility includes not only an administrative interface for PowerShell, but also a script editor that makes it possible to create and manage PowerShell files, scripts, modules and data files.

Through the PowerGUI Administrative Console, you can check out detailed information about running processes, all the system services, and event logs for applications, hardware events, Internet Explorer and other parts of the computer. There are many actions that can be carried out for each selected item (e.g. stop, suspend or resume process, modify properties, set start mode), so a complete set of administration tools are always at your disposal.

After inspecting the network configuration, you can view information for each network adapter such as IP statistics and MAC address, as well as export data to XML, HTML or CSV on the spot. With PowerGUI, you get full control over the registry keys, subkeys and their corresponding values, along with information on each drive and containing files.

Using the PowerGUI Script Editor, it's possible to load and edit existing scripts, create new ones from scratch, perform debugging jobs, compile scripts, and expand the functions of the application by loading addons.

Taking into account the rich set of features that the application offers, doubled by the ease of use that comes with all administration tasks and script authoring tasks, PowerGUI should meet the requirements of many users.