| It only opens as a command prompt if you open a command prompt; you can launch powershell.exe directly. Also, as of Win10: - CTRL+A, CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts work (as does CTRL+C as a BREAK command--it understands by the context of whether or not you have text selected) - There are a bunch of new shortcuts[1] - If you edit the properties of the Powershell terminal once, it should stay resizable (I think--correct me if I'm wrong, please) - If you right-click on the Taskbar and edit the properties, you can make the Win+X menu replace its Command Prompt and Command Prompt (Admin) with Powershell Prompt and Powershell Prompt (Admin) [2] - If the terminal isn't to your liking, you can try using the Powershell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) that comes with Windows. The Powershell ISE has debugging, syntax highlighting, and support for multiple tabs. - Pretty much anything you see in a new Windows 8/8.1/10-style window (e.g. the Settings menu that has largely supplanted the Control Panel) is, under the hood, written in Powershell... So anything that they do, you can do with Powershell. - You can make GUI applications relatively easily [3] Most of the benefits of Powershell are the same benefits of any other CLI--you get repeatable, powerful commands that can run locally or remotely and that will function basically the same on any two given systems (assuming same version of Powershell and same Execution Policy setting). Powershell is relatively verbose, but that means that everything is pretty clearly named to indicate its purpose and function. The commandlets have excellent documentation, complete with description, usage instructions, examples, and links to additional online resources/articles. Also, it has tab-autocompleting out the wazoo. And you can use wildcards with the Get-Help command--want a Powershell command for manipulating Services settings but don't know if such a thing even exists? `Get-Help service`. Want to see a list of every Powershell alias, commandlet, etc? `help *` (help is an alias of Get-Help). If you're accustomed to BASH, you can enjoy the default aliases that Powershell makes for BASH commands (e.g. cd is mapped as an alias of the Powershell command Set-Location). OH! And you can browse the registry as a filesystem! Try `cd HKLM:\` to access the Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. [1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Windows10GetsAFreshCommandProm... [2] http://lifehacker.com/replace-powershell-with-the-command-pr... [3] http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/building-gui-applications-in-... |
I should have specified that my last experience using it was with Windows 8.1, I don't think I have tried yet on 10.