I do have Cygwin installed but anyways I have been using Gow for a couple of months already. Thanks to it I can still run `grep` and `less` when I am using a normal DOS terminal (or even 4nt) for example when I need to run a build script.
There is still some grasps with the shipped versions of the tools i.e. missing some parameters and not having `awk` is a bummer.
I've always found the DOS terminal to be very dissatisfying. I recall when I first encountered WinNT40WS, which a colleague had billed as "a multiuser OS with a full shell", that, other than the lack of a full shell and useful utilities (I rapidly discovered MKS, UWIN, and Cygwin, followed very shortly thereafter with Linux, which supplanted the original OS a few months later), was the absolute crap terminal support.
That this is still the case (from my relatively minimal experiences/exposure to Win7) can just be piled on top of the large heap of embarrassments Microsoft have produced).
When installing Cygwin, among the first things I do is create a shortcut using the rxvt (non-X) client, with a command to launch a log-in shell session, with appropriate font and color settings. You can even run Windows commands and shells within this, though of course, they will also break in some full-screen instances.
Mostly I just avoid the whole problem. Pretty successfully for months at a stretch these days.
There is still some grasps with the shipped versions of the tools i.e. missing some parameters and not having `awk` is a bummer.