Cygwin (pronounced \sɪɡwɪn/) is a Unix-like environment for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Cygnus Solutions. It consists of two parts: a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as the Linux API emulation layer which provides a substantial part of the Linux API functionality, and a collection of tools which provide a Linux look and feel.

Cygwin is released under the GNU General Public License; it is free software. It is maintained by employees of Red Hat, NetApp and many other volunteers. Corinna Vinschen and Christopher Faylor are currently the managers of the Cygwin development team.

(please see the original WiKi)

The really cool part of Cygwin is the availability of Linux command tools without requiring a dual boot!
Launch the emulated login (\cygwin\bin\bash --login) {notice the windows \}and you have immediate access to
tools such as but once within the emulator, the Unix style separator '/' is used and the '\' reverts to
the meta-escape character.

Cygwin provides scripting tools for those familiar with Unix/Linux. If that's not you, then
you might be better off with Windows VB.