I’ve first encountered Cygwin back in 1995. It’s now a nearly complete Unix environment that runs on a Windows machine without replacing Windows or dual-booting. You can install a complete X11 server (XFree86), SSH, shells like bash and zsh, telnet … pretty much whatever you might need. If you need Unix capabilities on a Windows machine it would be worth your time to check it out.
Today I received announcement of a 3270 emulator, suite3270. For those that don’t know, 3270s are CRT devices that are often used on mainframes. They typically consist of a keyboard and a monitor — no mouse. For old mainframe jockeys like myself, 3270s were a godsend, allowing us to break away from punch cards.