<p>For some reason the Windows command prompt is "special" in that you have to go to a properties dialog to resize it horizontally rather than just dragging the corner of the window like every other app. Unsurprisingly this feature made it into P-P-P-Powershell as well -- is there any way around this via command prompt replacement or Windows hackery?</p>

2019 Update:
Microsoft has released the terminal app on
Github
& the
Windows Store
, and it has tabs, panels, acrylic transparency, and other features.
2016 Update:
Windows 10's default conhost UI has more features, including free resize, transparency, etc (this includes cmd & powershell)
I now use
ConEmu
(walkthrough
here
) which has many features including tabs & split panes.
Other options include
Cmder
(which comes with additional tools built in), and
ConsoleZ
(a fork of Console2).
Console
appears to no longer be updated