When it's the only thing on the OS that has X11 copy/pasting, that's the problem. It's like when people complain that a Linux program doesn't look like Linux, just like a bad Windows port.
Does putty support select, then right-click and click on Copy in the context menu? That is what I expect to work, and I've seen Unix ported apps that just ignore that, and have no Copy menu item either, so it's a complete mystery that selecting does anything.
This is pretty par for the course in the Windows world. There is no consistency, even within many single applications.
Aside from the various UI paradigms Microsoft has espoused over the years (eg. the 2003 sidebar, the 2007 ribbon, the 2010 tabbed ribbon), other vendors think they have their own intelligent concepts of how a UI should look.
It's just a damned good idea to RTFM, or at least skim it. I skimmed the PuTTY FAQ on day 1, many, many years ago.
Seems like if one couldn't figure out how to cut and paste in PuTTY, they'd check the docs.
I love that copy / paste method in putty. It drives me mad it doesn't work like that in the OS X terminal. Is there any way to get the OS X terminal to behave like Putty with copy and paste?
iTerm 2 has that feature. It's a very good Terminal replacement. The only complaint I've heard about it is that the rendering can be kinda slow if you're drinking from a firehose like dmesg.
Edit: After reviewing other comments, it appears people weren't aware that PuTTY has X11-style copy/pasting. It helps to read the docs, folks:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#f...