CSOM and Sharepoint 2013

Hi

Can someone confirm if the Client side object model is meant to work for Sharepoint 2013, as opposed to Sharepoint 365 / online ?

e.g. http://www.sharepoint-reference.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=21
http://blogs.office.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2012/11/09/what-s-new-with-information-rights-management-in-sharepoint-and-sharepoint-online.aspx

http://bramdejager.wordpress.com/tag/sharepoint-2013/ implies it shoulld work, i have the sdk installed and the assembly objects show up.

I have a normal Sharepoint 2013 site and can't get the CSOM examples to work (from Powershell), either with no credentials (default uses login) or with credentials. I used to credentials and

#ctx.load($web) is not liked (invalid arg) and $ctx.load runs without error, but $ctx does not get populated.

Thanks !!