It’s probably not good for your geek factor when you get excited about a new font in Windows, but a friend from work tipped me of about a new font in Windows 7 today; the Consolas TTF font, and now I am very excited.
This is the description of the Consolas font family from Microsoft.com:
Optimized for Microsoft ClearType
The Microsoft Consolas Font Family is a set of highly legible fonts designed for ClearType. It is intended for use in programming environments and other circumstances where a monospaced font is specified. All characters have the same width, like old typewriters, making it a good choice for personal and business correspondence. Optimizing the font specifically for ClearType allowed a design with proportions closer to normal text than traditional monospaced fonts like Courier. This allows for more comfortable reading of extended text on-screen.
Wikipedia also has an article on the Consolas font.
So far Consolas looks good on my displays. I do a lot of scripting in PowerShell so a good monospaced font is essential. Up until now I have always used Courier New, but that font is not optimized for ClearType. I will not say that I will be using Consolas from now on, but it looks good. And it also has a slash through the zero character!
Below are screenshots of cmd.exe using Courier New and Consolas:
You can read more about ClearType and Microsoft typography here.
The Consolas Font Pack can be downloaded here: