http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742610.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/confirmation.aspx?id=24045
Microsoft is creating a lot of good reasons to make the command prompt in Windows XP and the Windows Server 2003 family your home for systems management. Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC), which uses the power of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to enable systems management from the command line, is one of those reasons.
WMI has been an important part of Microsoft's systems management initiative since Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2.0 and has grown in popularity since the introduction of Windows 2000. However, until the introduction of WMIC, you couldn't easily access the WMI repository or the WMI namespace from a command prompt.