PowerShell! PowerShell! PowerShell!

One of the most powerful and flexible administration tools that Microsoft has released is PowerShell. PowerShell is also a dense, confusing, and hard to learn scripting language. I was having trouble wrapping my head around it, and then I found PowerGUI.
PowerGUI is a collection of scriptlets, add ons, and most importantly, a graphical user interface, scripting tool and syntax checker. The free (!!) version is very powerful, combined with the other free (!!) add on packs, there is something there for just about anyone who works with Active Directory or more than two machines running a Microsoft OS. I use it everyday to manage the machines that I deal with, it's the easiest way I have found to perform Active Directory management, gather information about remote machines, and much more. Enjoy.