Ok, time to confess:  I hate the Command Prompt that Microsoft gives you.  Ok, "hate" is too strong of a word, but as an old Unix guy (ok, not THAT old -- my first time I write C code on a Unix system was in 1982), I miss all the conveniences I had with the Unix shells and their utilities.  Of course, there's several ways to get around that, but none are quite as interesting as Microsoft's own "Services for Unix".  What's really cool about it is that you have a complete Unix environment running on top of the Windows kernel.  It's not a funky "interpreter", but the real thing (ah, the delight of setting up "cron" jobs). 

Even better:  Right now, it's free (well, the 3.5 beta is)

Even more better: You can find a ton of extra software for it at the Interop Systems Tools site.

Go have fun!