[jameshart]

SSH clients are also typically terminal emulators, though. The idea here would be to have an ssh client which acts as a better terminal than cmd.exe does. The effect of this isn't about whether you get access to a better shell, but instead about whether you have a better terminal with which to talk to that shell.

[gnu8]

The definitive SSH client isn't though. PuTTY, SecureCRT and the like are terminal emulators with SSH built in, but those are not the standard.

One of the big missing features in Windows is lack of SSH transport. Sure, its terminal emulator is adequate at best, but it does have one. The major news here is that it will finally be possible to remote into a Windows host the same way we remote to everything else.

[TylerE]

FYI: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Console2ABetterWindowsCommandP...

Will happily run a cmd window, or other command you supply (e.g. I run a cygwin zsh)

[vickm]

I recommend checking out ConsoleZ which is a fork that looks very promising and has a github repo that has more traffic than the sourceforge console2 project.

[nitrogen]

For anyone looking for old and mature options, xterm on a rootless Cygwin X server works quite well.