Part One of this short tutorial on VBScript illustrates a problem with this and most other tutorials: The examples might be fun and interesting - but they don't relate to the work that you have to do in the real world. I mean, placing a shortcut on the desktop is as easy as drag and drop - so it's likely that you won't really have a requirement to do that on the job. (On the other hand, maybe you will. If you need to place shortcuts on a thousand desktops throughout the world, this could be exactly what you're looking for.)
This is where we get real! The way most people actually use scripting is for system administration. And, although what we have shown so far is necessary, it isn't the hard core technology you will find on most jobs. For that, you will need to connect VBScript to systems that are already running in Windows. This usually means that you will connect to WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) and ADSI (Active Directory Service Interfaces).
Both WMI and ADSI are COM based and date back to much earlier versions of Windows even though they are still at the heart of Windows XP and even the next Windows - currently code named Longhorn. So, even though Microsoft programming is going 'totally managed CLR' code, COM will be with us for years to come. Think of WMI as being everything administrative having to do with Windows itself and ADSI as everything having to do with accounts running on Windows.
