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.