Ok, so what we're really saying is, I want a vt100 emulator.

What I'm really saying is I want a terminal, in which I can run whatever shell I want.

See also: Unix, Linux, OSX, etc, etc, etc.

Oh, that's easy. Start a cmd.exe terminal. Run bash (or whatever). Now you're running the shell of your choice in the cmd terminal.

Do you really find cmd.exe to be as good as OSX Terminal, or iTerm2, or the default Terminal on Ubuntu, or ??

I've used PS on Windows 7, not on Windows 8. So I'm sure it received an upgrade. I did like being able to essentially pipe objects from one script to another. But none of these apps are as flexible and powerful as the OSX and Ubuntu examples I mentioned earlier.

I'm really not one for internet debates, if you feel this protective of an under-featured and clunky terminal app then ok, good for you. You can have the last word. But the GP that you replied to originally was correct and your random half-answers are really missing the point.

Maybe conemu is what you want? Not made by MS though. I spend far less time copying and pasting into terminals in Windows, so the relative oddities involved aren't that bothersome.

I think cmd/powershell is different, and lots of people write it off without even considering it. Parent wanted something "developer friendly". That could mean anything to anybody. I can only give half-answers to a half-specified problem. :)

Sorry, if I wasn't very helpful. Far too often, it turns out "real development tools" means "exactly like on linux", and it's a waste of time to explain how to achieve similar features.

Most developers using VS don't have any need to use SSH.

Install Git Bash and/or msys. It's really not that bad. I fired my mouth off about PowerShell before learning more about it. PowerShell in Windows 8 does come with powerful remote conenction abilities and if you grok what PS is, it's better in many ways than it's unix (bash, zsh) brethren.