Here’s the full code for our info switch, making use of a hash table:

'info' {
Write-Host " ---- Computer info: ---- " -ForegroundColor Green
# Get info
$operatingSystem = Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem
$computerSystem = Get-CimInstance Win32_ComputerSystem
$cpuInfo = Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor
$storageInfo = Get-CimInstance Win32_LogicalDisk
$diskInfo = Get-CimInstance Win32_DiskDrive
$gpuInfo = Get-CimInstance Win32_DisplayConfiguration
$timeInfo = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LocalTime
# Organise info into hash-table
$allInfo = @{} # define hash table
$allInfo['Name'] = $[computerSystem.Name](<http://computersystem.name/>)
$allInfo['Local Time'] = "$($timeInfo.Day)/$($timeInfo.Month)/$($timeInfo.Year) $($timeInfo.Hour):$($timeInfo.Minute)" # DD/MM/YYY hh:mm
$allInfo['Domain'] = $computerSystem.Domain
$allInfo['Motherboard'] = "$($computerSystem.Model) | $($computerSystem.Manufacturer)"
$allInfo['Serial Number'] = $operatingSystem.SerialNumber
$allInfo['Processor'] = $[cpuInfo.Name](<http://cpuinfo.name/>)
$allInfo['GPU'] = $gpuInfo.DeviceName
$allInfo['Operating System'] = "$($operatingSystem.Caption), $($operatingSystem.OSArchitecture), Build $($operatingSystem.BuildNumber)"
$allInfo['Total RAM (GB)'] = "$($computerSystem.TotalPhysicalMemory /1GB) GB"
$allInfo['Storage'] = foreach ($drive in $storageInfo) {
if ($drive.DriveType -eq 3) {
"$($drive.DeviceID) $(($drive.FreeSpace/1GB).ToString("N2"))GB Free of $(($drive.Size/1GB).ToString("N2"))GB"
}
}
$allInfo['Disk'] = foreach ($disk in $diskInfo) {
"$($disk.DeviceID) $(($disk.Size /1GB).ToString("N2"))GB"
}
# Display the table
$allInfo
}

I used a few tricks to wrangle the information into a more human-readable form, for example, what’s going on with this line of code:

$(($drive.FreeSpace/1GB).ToString("N2"))

Firstly, it is wrapped in $() . This is called variable substitution, and can be easily demonstrated with something like this:

$username = "Barclay"
Write-Host "Welcome $username"
# Output: Welcome Barclay

We don’t need to use $() to enclose the $username variable because it is a simple string-substitution. But what happens when you want to do something more complex inside the string, like a calculation or a function call? That’s where the $()notation comes in. It’s basically saying “evaluate what’s inside these brackets as code”. So if you have a bit of code like:

$age = 10
Write-Host "Twice your age would be $($age * 2)"
# Output: "Twice your age would be 20"

PowerShell will calculate $age * 2 and then put the result into the string.

Otherwise, if you wrote it without the dollar-bracket $():

$age = 10
Write-Host "Twice your age would be $age * 2"
# Output: "Twice your age would be 10 * 2"

PowerShell does not know you want it do the math, and literally writes out the equation instead.

Back to our code, inside the $(), we have ($drive.FreeSpace/1GB). Here we are accessing the FreeSpace property of our $drive object. FreeSpace is returned in bytes by default, so /1GB converts it to gigabytes. This is enclosed in brackets so it gets executed before interacting with any of the other operations in the line (just like BODMAS or whatever you called it at school). Then we take that value (the hard-drive’s free space in GB) and perform the ToString("N2") method on it. “N” stands for Numeric and “2” is the number of decimal places you want. So, “N2” means we want our number displayed as a numeric value with two decimal places.