Today I am starting a new series of posts on my site called Quick-Tips. Each week, I will post one (or more!) quick tips that you may find useful for day-to-day activities or for smart ideas to incorporate into your code. These "tips" will not be as long as a regluar blog post. Instead, they're meant to be short and to the point. Think of them as little bite-size snippets or pointers that you can take with you right away.

So here goes... my very first quick-tip is using Test-Connection to verify a computer is online. Think of Test-Connection as a fancy way to say PING.

Below is a snippet of code that you can add to your scripts to verify a computer is online. The output from this command will be a true or false. You can turn this code into a function and then simply call it via the pipeline.

$online= Test-Connection -ComputerName $computer -Count 1 -Buffersize 16 -Quiet
    if ($online -eq $true)
     {
        # Computer is online
        # Code goes here
     }
    else
     {
        # Computer is not reachable!
        Write-Host "Error: $computer not online" -Foreground white -BackgroundColor Red
     }

Look for one or more quicktips every week. Remember you can keep up on new content by following me on Twitter, subscribing to my RSS Feed or by signing up for my weekly newsletter at the bottom of this page.

Also, I invite you to leave comments below. I try to write useful articles and feedback always helps. Your comments are always welcomed!