Also, don't forget F7. This pops up a DOS-style menu showing command history (ESC to make it go away). The 'last' command either entered, or selected with up-arrow will be shown, so you immediately will see where you are in the up/down arrow context.
Apparently this is from something called DOSKEY, a poorly documented utility. For example, besides up, down, and then enter to execute the command, I have found that a right or left arrow key will put it at the prompt without executing (so you can edit it). PgUp/PgDn/Home/End will navigate through the list in the obvious way, and I just discovered (haven't seen it documented anywhere) that if you press the first letter of a command it will cycle through commands starting with that letter (so type a command like ze fun start now! to jump to that point in history easily by pressing z in teh F7).
Perhaps though,if one foresees the reliving much of history, may tis better to
doskey /history > editme.batthan suffer the slings and arrows, and copy/paste from said record (or have thine minions fashion it into a script).
There's a couple other command prompt tricks in Joel Spolsky's article probably aren't widely known. I didn't know about the wildcard expansion, so you can use tab-completion by typing the last characters of a name, or the middle.
I find the windows prompt quaint, but consider it dead end, and only learn such trivia when it seems that it will reduce my interactiion with it. Given the opportunity I believe it is better to install cygwin to get a more expression shell and less annoying environment, and skills and scripts that you'll be able to use elsewhere.