Book excerpt: Here is your best companion to the capabilities and power that PowerShell offers. Inside this book, you’ll discover the object-oriented features of the shell and how they help in extracting and manipulating data. You’ll then learn how to use those features to solve real-world problems: manipulating files, working with text, monitoring systems, and performing operations over the network. In addition, you’ll find freely available tools and extensions that help you get results with Windows PowerShell fast.