Is there a better Windows "Terminal" application?

Question

I loath working on the command line in Windows, primarily because the terminal application is wretched to use compared to terminal applications on linux and OS X. Major complaints

1. No standard copy/paste. You have to turn on "mark" mode and it's only available from a multi-level popup triggered by the (small) left hand corner button. Then copy and paste need to be invoked from the same menu

2. You can't arbitrarily resize the window by dragging, you need to set a preference (back to the multi-level popup) each time you want to resize a window

3. You can only make the window so big before horizontal scroll bars enter the picture. Horizontal scroll bars suck.

4. You can't navigate to folders with \\netpath notation (UNC?), you need to map a network drive. This sucks when working on multiple machines that are going to have different drives mapped

Are there any tricks or applications, (paid or otherwise), that address these issue?

Answer 1

Try Console 2.

Answer 2

Take a look at Take Command.

Answer 3

Try these:

Windows PowerShell, a managed command interpreter from Microsoft. Take Command. This one has been around for a long time (formerly 4DOS). I used this on Windows NT 3.5 (!) and loved it. Cygwin lets you run Unix shells on Windows.

Answer 4

I've had these issues too for years on Windows, but I recently found this project: Console

It still requires "mark mode" for copy/paste, but at least it's available from a right-click contextual menu (so you don't need to move the mouse to the top left and then move it again to the text you want to select)

UNC paths are not supported by cmd.exe but they are supported by PowerShell. (Console can be configured to use any shell, including cmd.exe and PowerShell)

Answer 5

Console

From documentation:

NOTE: Console is NOT a shell. Therefore, it does not implement shell features like command-line completion, syntax coloring, command history, etc.

Console is simply a nice-looking front end for a shell of your choice (cmd.exe, 4NT, bash, etc.) Other command-line utilities can also be used as 'shells' by Console.

As a programming shell one can use ipython.

Answer 6

I'm using Terminals for remote connection via Telnet, RDC, SSH, ... Combines most used protocolls in one program.

URL: http://www.codeplex.com/Terminals

Answer 7

I use Cygwin with Poderosa.

Answer 8

Try any of the things suggested when I asked this question.

Answer 9

1. Turn on quickedit mode (but selection is still rectangular instead of word-wrapped)
2. Resizing by dragging works for me
3. You can change the buffer size which will impact when scrollbars appear
4. pushd \\server\share

Even with those, cmd.exe isn't a great console. See all the other replies and the earlier stackoverflow questions on the same subject. The "Console" project from sourceforge looks pretty good.

Answer 10

Why not use Putty?

Answer 11

I use rxvt from cygwin. It behaves very much like an xterm.