You can't seriously reply saying "PuTTY is awful, instead install <i>Cygwin</i>"?<p>PuTTY is almost as good a program can get - no install, basic use case just works, good default colour scheme, proper full screen option available. Fast, simple, minimal fuss until you hit some stupid terminal quirks.<p>Cygwin is almost as bad as a program can get - massive install, with confusing nonresizable large package choice dialog, masses of files everywhere, services, ugly stuck in a command prompt by default, hacks to bring everything unpleasant about <i>nix onto Windows.<p>Get many good things from command line </i>nix from <a href="http://unxutils.sourceforge.net" rel="nofollow">http://unxutils.sourceforge.net</a>, put them in a folder in your PATH and leave the CygWin swamp a long way away.<p>Maybe I'll try it again with MinTTY, it does look like a good terminal for CygWin. It's not an easy decision though, I predict it wont be at all fun.