[vertex-four]

As someone who's admined Windows systems, the solution comes in the form of the Powershell ISE, installed on any modern Windows system. Essentially, a combination code editor and terminal for Powershell in a modern Windows interface.

Nobody uses the default terminal (cmd.exe and systems built on top of it). There's alternatives, though, and at least one is pre-installed. Do you judge Linux's command-line capabilities by the usability of xterm?

[mattmanser]

Embarrassingly I only found this about 2 weeks ago after deciding to give powershell another shot, it is rather good I must admit. I just got in the habit of typing cmd/pow in start and hitting enter.

One of the disadvantages of relying on HN for tech news, few MS stories apart from the occasional "new VS released"/"C# is awesome but lets rag on it anyway"/"wow, F# is great (no-one uses it)" stories.

I seem to remember when powershell first came out the only way to manage the next generation exchange was through the CLI? Quite a few tools lost their GUIs for a little bit? 2008? Am I wrong? Are the GUIs back now? I lost contact with my sysadmin friend and have mainly been working with small companies since that tend to outsource everything to google apps so am completely out of touch on Windows sysadmin.

[vertex-four]

Most of Exchange can be configured through the GUI - which is essentially a wrapper around Powershell commands - although there's bits and pieces that can't be, especially while initially setting up the system.

Office 365, however, requires a lot of Powershell administration, as it doesn't support the GUI management panel, and the web admin panel doesn't expose much functionality.