Nice! So when they couldn't use a reserved folder name, they went for the next best thing ;)

Sure you can.

Create a folder.

Rename it to ".Net.". The dot at the end of the folder name is important.

Interesting. But they didn't call it dot-net-dot :-)

Explorer silently strips the trailing dot and is tricked into doing the right thing.

This becomes quite annoying when I try to create a .htaccess file. (Command line rename is the only solution I've found.)

Cygwin. Don't use the Windows command line. Just don't.

And while you are at it, use PuTTY-based Minterm instead of the Windows console.

Can you explain why? I use cygwin when I need GNU-like tools (sed, grep, etc.) but for something like renaming a file I don't see the point of using a slower terminal that requires more typing (

    cd /cygdrive/c/Doc<tab><wait>/mkop<tab><wait>/Desktop/bla

vs

    cd \Doc<tab>mkop<tab>Des<tab>bla

) just so I can type "mv" instead of "rename".

I've never used minterm. What does it do better?

With Cygwin, your home directory should be your WINHOME (I'm doing this from memory, bear with me), so, in fact, your cd would be

    cd Desk<tab>bla

or, worst case,

    cd ~/Des<tab>bla

Running programs is also a tiny fraction of what bash can do - it's a full (well... almost) fledged scripting language and you can do things like loops, conditionals and other stuff. Before I discovered watch, I'd do things like

    while true; do df -h ; sleep 10 ; clear ; done

Also, the PuTTY-based console has a lot of niceties when compared to a plain console window - it's prettier, you have better font controls and better clipboard integration.

In my default cygwin install, my home directory was C:\cygwin\home\mkopinsk. I just changed it (in C:\Cygwin\etc\profile) to /cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/mkopinsk so hopefully it should be a bit less painful now. I will consider switching to a non-cygwin solution in the future.

That's odd. What version of Windows are you using? Last time I used Cygwin (XP or Vista, can't remember), the home defaulted to the Windows home.

XP. I don't remember changing any options in setup.exe, but who knows. Bottom line it's fixed.

Use MSYS (part of MinGW) and Console2 (set bash as shell).

cd /c/Doc<tab>/mkop<tab>/Desktop/bla

This doesn't answer my main question, which is WHY? What do these tools do better (enough to matter)?

I prefer the Unix command line everywhere. MSYS gives you a Unix shell, and all the Unix tools, built right on top of win32. I haven't used it in years, but I understand Cygwin is quite a bit heavier.

The cmd.exe terminal is atrocious. Even if you don't want to use Bash, Console2 gives you things like tabs, and you can resize the window normally.

tldr; It's not slower, it doesn't involve more typing, it gives you a sane Unix command-line experience on Windows.