In addition to the above, you can also use PowerShell to access WMI. The Get-WMI cmdlet and the three type accelerators ([wmi], [wmiclass], and [wmisearcher]) enable basic administrative access to WMI.
Additional WMI features are added in PowerShell V2, currently in beta testing. V2 CTP3 was released late 2008 and will be released along with Windows 7 sometime in 2009.