If you’re running Vista there’s a quick tweak you can do with the CMD window which your eyes will thank you for. Vista ships with a new set of fonts and the new fixed width font is Consolas which is an easy to read, clean looking font.

Consolas used in CMD window.

By default you cannot use it in your CMD window but a quick reg hack will add that ability. First run the following command either from a CMD window or a RUN window:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont" /v 00 /d Consolas

That’s all it takes to use Consolas as your option in your CMD window. Well, not quite. You have to log off and log back in for the changes to take effect, but no restart required.

CMD Properties with Consolas selected.

There you have it. Pretty simple, but much easier to read than the default system font and Lucida Console is so last year.