Power shell is a replacement to the existing shell (batch to be more precisesly speaking). Powershell has beeter string manipulation and better control construct, whch maneks it better for system administration on the windows platform
to start the powershell, you can start the command line
powershell
to start the powershell, you can start the command line
powershell
and then you can type some command in, here is an example
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC>powershell
Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
PS C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC> $a = $env:path; $a.split(";")
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft F#\v4.0\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VSTSDB\Deploy
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\BIN
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\VCPackages
C:\Program Files (x86)\HTML Help Workshop
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Performance Tools
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin
c:\program files (x86)\fortify software\hp fortify v3.60\bin
C:\Windows\system32
C:\Windows
C:\Windows\system32\wbem
C:\Windows\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\
C:\SysAdmin
c:\program files (x86)\microsoft application virtualization client
C:\SysAdmin\bin\winengine
c:\program files (x86)\common files\hitachi id\
c:\program files\openafs\2011.4.22-x64\bin
\\ms\dist\aurora\proj\modulecmd\prod\bin
c:\program files\perforce
C:\SysAdmin\bin\winengine
c:\program files\openafs\2012.5.16-x64\bin
You may find more deails on the first to Powershell series like here: "Running Windows PowerShell Scripts"
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176949.aspx