git setup - windows

Chronologically this post should come before the git command quick ref, but was too lazy to write this down at that time and struggled again when time came to move to a new laptop.  So here are the steps I followed:

1. Download the msysgit (exe/zip) whichever you prefer,  I usually go for the zip version always.  I have not yet tried, but you may choose to use the GUI as well.  The default gui that comes with msysgit is good enough also.
2. Do not add the bin folder to your path if using any unix utils port or cygwin as there will be lot of conflicts.  Just add the upto the git folder to the path, which contains a batch file git-bash.bat.  Once you run this, you will get a shell prompt and all the git commends will be available from here.
3. git will store all settings to %HOME% folder, which will not be defined usually on windows and will default to your profile directory C:\Documents and Settings\user on XP.  Thanks to VonC, he mentions a nice setting.  Change the %HOME% to whatever folder you want in the file profile within etc folder.  Search for the line "# Set up USER's home directory".  Once in the git-bash shell, / (forward slash) aka root is pointed to the git setup folder.  If you prefer to have your settings stored within this, just set HOME to /yourname.
4. Minimally we just need to setup user name and email to start using git and there are 3 scopes available - system, global and local.  You can refer to the freely available Pro Git book to learn about them and more about Git.