Still haven't found anything that beats Consolas (at least on Windows machines). Inconsolata comes close, but the strokes are a bit thin and spacing is too crowded.
EDIT: OK actually I just tried the hinted TTF version of Inconsolata from Google Fonts [0] and the stroke width is way better. Still crowded - like each glyph takes up juuuuuust a little too much of its bounding rectangle (whatever you would call that).
I use Mac, not Windows, so I'm sure I see them rendered quite differently than you, but I prefer Source Code Pro.[1][2] They are extremely similar and I agree nothing else comes very close.
It's the lower-case 'i' that does it for me.[3]
Fewer serifs in general allow me to read more quickly, I feel. 'i' has 1 to Consolas' 3, while lower case 'l' (L) has 2 to Consolas' 3.
One negative is that I much prefer Consolas' 0-with-slant to Source Code Pro's 0-with-dot.
By the way, the first link below is from a very cool resource I just found with votes and comparisons of many of the most popular choices: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming... (It seems the web has become more informative on this topic than the last time I surveyed all the font options.)
Finally, this is what the designer of Source Code Pro, Paul D. Hunt, had to say about the two[2]:
> Consolas is narrower than most monospaced fonts at 55% of the Em square, where I stuck with 60% for Source Code. If the narrowness is a top selling point for you, then Consolas is definitely king.
Another vote for Source Code Pro (Semibold 12, white on black, full screen gnome-terminal, compiz 3d workspace box spinning model yumminess). I also like some console fonts and frequently use them for coding on my laptop (17" Macbook Pro + Gentoo + 2xSSDs + ZFS).
Me too, I use source-code-pro almost everwhere (I have problems making it stick with AppleScript because I use different editors I believe). I love it.
Consolas stands out on Windows as it's highly tuned with ClearType in mind. Many excellent fonts that render fine on MacOS are almost unbearable on Windows, like Inconsolata.
EDIT: OK actually I just tried the hinted TTF version of Inconsolata from Google Fonts [0] and the stroke width is way better. Still crowded - like each glyph takes up juuuuuust a little too much of its bounding rectangle (whatever you would call that).
[0] http://www.google.com/fonts#UsePlace:use/Collection:Inconsol...