This chapter has presented, through a series of nine class modules, a demonstration of some of the system and device information that’s available as part of the Windows API. By exposing the various bits of information as properties of the classes and grouping the wildly jumbled API calls into logical units, we’ve attempted to make this large body of information more useful to you as a solution developer.
On the other hand, this chapter just barely skimmed the surface of the system information available from the Win32 API. Although the chapter may seem fairly exhaustive, this is not the case. There are many more corners of the API to be poked at. For example, the GetDeviceCaps and DeviceCapabilities functions offer a treasure trove of information about devices such as the installed video and printer drivers. The properties discussed in this chapter should go a long way toward getting you the information you need in your solutions. In addition, should you need to add more information gathered from the API, the class modules provided in this chapter should be a good start for your own coding.
In particular, this chapter provided class modules dealing with the following areas of the Win32 API:
Other chapters in this book discuss additional issues that are pertinent to the discussion in this chapter. For example, for information on working with disks and files and gathering information about these objects, see Chapter 12. For information on working with the System Registry, see Chapter 10.