I was working on my Mac today and while I maintain that the OS X finder is as effective as shooting your hands fill of Novocaine, I remain envious of the simplicity of their Terminal. Not much interesting has happened in the command prompt world in Windows since, well, ever. I actually blogged about text mode as a missed opportunity in 2004. That post is still valid today, I think. Text is fast. I spend lots of time there and I will race anyone with a mouse, any day.
I blogged about Console2 as a better prompt for CMD.exe in 2005. Here we are 6 years later and I hopped over there to see Console2 was still being developed. They were on build 122 then, and they are, magically and to their extreme credit, still around and on build 147. Epic.
I downloaded Console2 at http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/files/ and put it c:\dev\utils which is in my PATH.
You'll have a nice "New Tab" option where you can make one of either shell. Note the general loveliness of this understated shell. I can open a new Tab with Ctrl-T (or lots) and use Ctrl-Tab to move between them. I took the screenshot with the background so you can see the transparency.
One final reason why Console2 rocks? It's freaking resizable in two directions, unlike the Windows CMD.exe console.
Console2 is a great little front-end for your existing shell, no matter what it is. Note that Console2 isn't a shell itself, it's just a face on whatever you are already using. Enjoy.
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.