The shell really is inexcusable.

Ever seen this? So close yet so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

I moved to cygwin+bash years ago which is 95% there -- and boy does the 5% have really sharp edges.

I use MSYS right now, which does an okay job for what I need it for, but it can be confusing when the MSYS grep isn't the same as the GnuWin32 grep (GnuWin32 has -P, MSYS grep doesn't).

POSIX isn't divine and infallible. PowerShell is actually quite nice, save for the arcane Windows console UI. I still prefer zsh, but that's no reason to immediately discard a competitor.

I have a windows workstation. Every single server I interact with is POSIX. POSIX isn't divine and infallible and PowerShell is nice, but it isn't as ubiquitous and I only have enough patience for one arcane shell language.

Try http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/. It's wonderful.

You can install Services for Unix, it comes with the Korn shell.