Why is the Windows cmd.exe limited to 80 characters wide?

Question

I love stretching my terminal on unix. What is the history or reason behind windows lame command line?

Answer 1

It IS limited. Check it out. (I mean window size NOT buffer)

You will find that the maximum width you can set is limited but varies according to your screen resolution. If your resolution is set to 1024 x 768 you will find that you can only get to 128 on the command prompt width. 128/1024=.125

you will find that ratio to be consistent across the board. I have an RDP session running at 2000x768 (across two of my three monitors) and get a max width of 250.

Now, that actaully turns out to be a little bigger than your actaul monitor size but I have three monitors all running individual desktops. (so in essence, 3 1024x768 resolutions) and if I want to do something SO SIMPLE as stretch a command prompt across 2 or more monitors, I CAN'T. (I want to when doing things with very long paths (diruse.exe/etc.)...

-c