Fear not, for the open source world has made efforts to bring you closer to your $HOME.
Cygwin - a Linux like environment for Windows gives you all the tools that you missed on cmd.exe - find, grep, ls and many more. You can download Cygwin from Cygwin home
Just remember one thing - when you install it for the first time - do a basic installation - i.e. do not select too many packages. Let the default installation do its job. You can always add new packages by running the setup again (no - it won't erase the previous setup - that's just cygwin's way of adding new packages).
And while I see some of you drooling and foaming at the mouth with this knowledge, while others rubbing their palms in anticipation and clearing your throats for a wicked mad scientist laugh, a little info which saved me some more time while installing cygwin - the clear command is a part of the ncurses package, which is not a part of the default installation. So check that one on if you can type clear faster than you can do a ctrl-l.
And so with cygwin, it is a cyg-win-win situation. I will try to keep the wordplay at a minimum - I promise. Please read on.
Cygwin gives you find but not the vi-mode on the shell. And neither does it give you tabbing.
That prophecy is fulfilled by Poderosa. Its pre-requisite is the presence of Cygwin (I don't think it does check but it has a cygwin icon on which you click to open up tabbed cygwin sessions). Download it. Its a simple 'click-next-click' installation.
But whenever I try to connect to cygwin via Poderosa I get an error "The registry key SOFTWARE\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin\mounts v2\/ is not found. Cygwin may not be installed correctly" (Damn you windows for not giving copy-paste on error dialog boxes. ). But like a good ignorant Windows user I click OK and it works.
<jingle_bells_tone>
multi tabs, multi tabs - bashing all the way.
oh what fun, it is to type, in the vi-mode today.
</jingle_bells_tone>
I have been using Cygwin + Podersoa as per the recommended dosage and the doctor says my recovery is pretty fast.
Get well soon..