A recent post on the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog showed how to use PowerShell to find a network adapter’s MAC address. The post provided two ways to get the information using WMI:

Get-WmiObject win32_networkadapterconfiguration | select description, macaddress

Get-CimInstance win32_networkadapterconfiguration | select description, macaddress

I wondered about the difference between GetWmiObject versus Get-CimInstance. Happily, while exploring older Hey, Scripting Guy! posts, I found one about simplifying PowerShell scripts that addressed the difference(s):

One of the first changes I make to a script, if I can, is I change Get-WmiObject to Get-CimInstance. Since Windows PowerShell 3.0, I can use Get-CimInstance. It is faster and more robust, and it permits lots of cool things for retrieving data (such as using Cim-Sessions).

Since most of our servers here are running PowerShell 2.0 right now, it will be a while before I can routinely use Get-CimInstance instead of Get-WmiObject — but it’s something for me to keep in mind for the future.