I can’t stand using Putty for SSH on Windows. It’s ugly and very non user-friendly. I even got a Mac laptop which I often use for just SSH using Mac Terminal. But, yesterday I discovered mRemoteNG from a coworker, which is a wrapper to Putty, supports tabs, and offers a much better overall SSH experience from Windows. If you need a terminal on Windows, I’d recommend Putty + mRemoteNG. Learn more and download at
http://www.mremoteng.org/
In addition, to fix the ugly color scheme that comes with Putty, use one of these custom themes.
http://www.igvita.com/2008/04/14/custom-putty-color-themes/