PowerCmd is a commercial alternative to the usual Windows command prompt, which does a great job of bringing the ancient DOS interface bang up to date.

There's easy editing, for instance. You don't have to remember any of the usual command prompt nonsense - just select with the mouse, drag and drop, copy and paste, PowerCmd brings all the usual Windows GUI editing techniques to your command line.

You won't have to spend nearly as much time typing with PowerCmd, though. Easily accessible command histories mean you recall and reuse previous commands in a flash. And auto completion minimises the need to enter really long folder names. Type DIR C:\ , say, and a list showing all the C:\ subfolders pops up - just choose the one you need and PowerCmd will enter the full name for you.

You also get a tabbed interface, allowing you to have multiple tabs open at once, and easily switch between them.

If you're involved in some complex task and need to close PowerCmd down, it's not a problem - the program can save your current sessions and restore them later.

And there's a whole lot more here. Easy text searching within a command prompt session, for instance. Session logging, providing a record of what you're doing. Visible environment variables, a customisable Quick Launch toolbar to fire off your own commands, batch files or scripts, and more.

The price for all this starts at $29.99, with the price falling if you purchase licences in bulk (5 or more). This feels a little expensive for us, but PowerCmd does provide a great environment to work: if you spend a lot of time at the command line, buying a copy could make a lot of sense.