I always try ls even when I'm on the real windows terminal, and I suffer each time it happens. Fortunately it's a rare event.

One of the first things I do on a new windows box is put a batch file called ls.bat in a directory in my path that just calls dir!

I tend to drop windows ports of a bunch of unix command line utils somewhere in my PATH

http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

Install powershell, or use win 7 (comes with powershell). It comes preconfigured with aliases for rm, ls, cat, etc...

First thing I do is install Cygwin.

Ah, so I'm not the only one experiencing suffering when having to use Windows. :)

Recently learned about AndLinux [1] and CoLinux [2] -- running a Linux kernel atop Windows. Didn't use it yet but looks promising.

[1] http://www.andlinux.org/ [2] http://www.colinux.org/