> what additional tools to you want

A real POSIX shell that isn't slow. A fast gcc and the like.

It is a pain to compile psycopg2 and lxml on windows compared to linux. Cygwin and virtual machines are unfortunately too slow when you are used to working in a non-virtualized Linux environment.

I'm heavily biased though because once you are addicted to the command line, it becomes very hard to live on Windows :-(

IPython doesn't get you POSIX, but it mitigates a lot of the pain. I run it inside console2 and the experience is pretty good. I have grep, gzip, plink, ffmpeg, and a bunch of other command line programs available from gnuwin32 and elsewhere. Given the choice I would use linux, but the most powerful machine I have access to is Win7 and I'm prohibited from changing this :(

Thanks for the tips. I may be working soon in a windows shop (who deploys on Linux.. ahhhh) and I'm looking for these tips to stay sane.

Have you seen PowerShell? It has only shipped with the OS starting with Windows 7, but it's a surprisingly powerful shell--in some ways it looks way more powerful (and complicated) than bash and the like.

Quick one from my POV: IDLE is slow as molasses and crashes if you do anything silly. Needs performance and isolation.

IDLE kind of sucks, but ever since I discovered DreamPie and iPython I don't think I've used IDLE even once.

Not sure if anyone using or treating IDLE for serious development here, but PyScripter is a quite powerful IDE for Windows.