Windows Console Replacements, Part 0 - Take Command and the Windows Console

(I’ve received several emails over the past week pointing out that I neglected to start this console replacement series by comparing Take Command with the standard Windows console. So here’s Part Zero!)

Command line apps are executed by the Windows console manager, which runs them in a bare-bones window. The console manager and CMD (the default Windows command processor) were introduced in Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. While there have been some underlying architectural changes, the UI hasn’t changed significantly since then. The Windows console manager numerous shortcomings include:

• Slow
• No tabbed windows option
• No toolbars
• No status bar
• No help
• No save or print features
• Clumsy and limited cut and paste options
• Ditto for the search options
• Bad-to-nonexistent drag & drop capabilities (this is marginally better in Windows 7)
• Awkward resizing
• Not very configurable
• No themes
• Slooooooowwwww (did I mention that already?)

Rewriting the Windows console manager itself was out of the question (for one thing, Microsoft has neglected to document it or any of its APIs). But there have been several third-party attempts to wrap up the Windows console and hide it away, to improve the user interface and/or functionality (including our own Take Command and TCC).

First look at the standard Windows console:

It’s a bit … stark. After 19 years, you’d think that Microsoft could have come up with something a bit more appealing! There are a handful of configuration options available by clicking on the icon on the title bar and selecting “Properties”, but nothing to solve the fundamental limitations I listed above.

Now let’s take a look at the Take Command window. (The Take Command Explorer-style Folder and List View windows, and the common Command Input window are set to Autohide in order to show a more straightforward comparison with the Windows console window.)

Take Command solves all of the Windows console limitations listed above, and a few thousand others we don’t have room to detail here. (For full details, see our online help.)

Let’s look at a few of the Take Command features that aren’t available in the standard Windows console (or the standard Windows command interpreter CMD). And note the speed comparison — Take Command displays output from Windows command line applications twice as fast as the standard Windows console.

Features	Take Command	Windows
Price (single new copy)	$99.95	Included
Tabbed Windows UI
Multiple tabbed windows for console applications
Run simple GUI apps in tabs
Customize menu accelerator keys
Customize tabs location (top/bottom/left/right)
Multiple display themes
Horizontal / vertical tab groups
Attach and detach console windows
Optional command input window
Cut and paste block and/or line selection
Continuously variable transparency option
Integrated GUI file explorer
User-defined startup tabs
Programmable tabbed toolbar
Configurable status bar
Full text search in tabbed console windows
Context-sensitive help for all commands and variables
32-bit and 64-bit versions
Display Speed	Take Command	Windows
dir /s c:\windows (in seconds) – Windows console: 38.5	19.5	38.5
Command Prompt	Take Command	Windows (CMD)
GUI IDE w/ batch file debugger
Aliases (command and directory)
Regular Expressions in filenames
Wildcards in pathnames and/or filenames
Enhanced command line editor
Enhanced filename completion
GDirectory Navigation
ANSI X3.64 text output
Built in batch file editor
Direct FTP / HTTP file access (including SSL & SSH)
Network file system access (OpenAFS)
Active Scripting (Perl, Python, VBSscript, Javascript)
Scripting Language	Take Command	Windows (CMD)
Internal Commands	182	34 *
Internal Variables	177	6 *
Internal Functions	291	0 *

*Windows includes CMD, a (very) minimal command interpreter.

Next time: Comparing Take Command and Console (sometimes called Console2).