Well, Cygwin is a terminal emulator.  So you can even replace Putty with it.  Because it's a linux command line .  When I ssh to a switch, I do ssh -l myusername 10.0.0.1
The terminal asks me for my password and I type it in.  Boom, im ssh'ed into a switch.  You can also telnet into a switch just as easy.  If for ssh you don't want to use the -l switch, you can do ssh myusername@10.0.0.1.  Anyway, cygwin is very easy to use for what I am suggesting.