Err anyone know where I can post Windows feature requests

I have some nagging things that I'd like to request (for Windows 9 I guess!!!), I assumed Connect would be the place to go but I can't see a plain old 'Windows' option.

http://connect.microsoft.com/directory/windows/

Does Sinofsky just come up with this stuff in the shower himself these days?

What do you mean by Windows? Do you mean the NT kernel, the Win32 API, the Desktop Windows Manager or explorer.exe?

@evildictaitor: Not wishing to appear overly facetious but I mean this: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-7-Home-Premium/dp/B002DHGMK0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1309420618&sr=8-2 

The point being that I assumed that somewhere on the internet Microsoft would have a feature request/complaint box where normal punters can post their wishes & whines. Some place where Microsoft do their own categorising thank you very much.

In this case my whinges/suggestions were:-

Virtual Desktop please. Ripping off the OS X Spaces would be a good start. On no accounts call the feature 'Virtual Desktop'. I guess that one would be DWM or just UX.

FTP can we have some support for passive mode, FTPS & SFTP when acting as a client. DOS ftp.exe, Powershell, Windows explorer, IE in all places. hmm where are going to categorise that one - I'm honestly not sure but NT kernel seems a bit too low for me - maybe I'm wrong as I'm nto super strong on my Windows architecture stack. But UX for explorer, IE for IE, Win32 API support would be good. Golly this categorising business can be tricky - wonder how my mum copes.

That was all. This requests were in my head and I just wanted to find somewhere simple to write them down, get them out of head and on with something else.

I can't imagine accepting arbitrary feedback and suggestions would actually turn out to be a particularly effective way of working. There would inevitably be significantly more noise than content.

@CKurt:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/messenger/ would be a good place to start, I guess

@Simo: Virtual Desktop: Windows XP had a Power Toy to do this but nobody used it. Called the "Virtual Desktop Manager." They could update it and release it for Windows 7, but I suspect nobody would still use it.

I agree ftp.exe needs some improvements. It is the worlds favourite FTP client and yet it hasn't been updated very much since Windows 95.

20 hours ago,Simo wrote

I have some nagging things that I'd like to request (for Windows 9 I guess!!!), I assumed Connect would be the place to go but I can't see a plain old 'Windows' option.

http://connect.microsoft.com/directory/windows/

 

Does Sinofsky just come up with this stuff in the shower himself these days?

The most efficient way for you to deal with your Windows feature requests would be to scribble them on a post it note and then throw it in the bin. That will have exactly the same effect as any method of informing Microsoft about them and will take considerably less time and effort.

2 hours ago,AndyC wrote

I can't imagine accepting arbitrary feedback and suggestions would actually turn out to be a particularly effective way of working. There would inevitably be significantly more noise than content.

Quite. Why would MS be interested in learning about what their customers think they're struggling with.

15 minutes ago,rhm wrote

*snip*

The most efficient way for you to deal with your Windows feature requests would be to scribble them on a post it note and then throw it in the bin. That will have exactly the same effect as any method of informing Microsoft about them and will take considerably less time and effort.

Hah. Probably very true, but not as satisfying as a post-it note bin on the internet. Maybe I should put my post-its in an envelope and post them to Mr Sinofsky, Microsoft, Microsoft-land, America.

36 minutes ago,Simo wrote

*snip*

Quite. Why would MS be interested in learning about what their customers think they're struggling with.

Read the comments on the ieblog, full of such incredible wisdom as "For gods sake please stop making browsers", then imagine what that would translate to if you opened it up to comments across the entirety of Windows. Do you really think paying people to sort through the thousands of "OMG! Just use teh linuxz!" and "My printer isn't working. Fix it" comments on the off-chance that somewhere in amongst all that feedback is something useful is a productive use of time and money?

You don't have to look hard on the web to find good feedback about Windows without having to explictly ask for it and I suspect you'll find looking at that (along with other face to face discussions with customers) to be a far better way of discerning useful improvements.

Based on the responses so far it seems that a technology company is having issues relating in a non-technology way.  All the points are valid as neighbors, cousins, moms, etc. don't know a blog from a flog.

A simple solution would be to put a comment box on the http://www.microsoft.com ContactUS page.  I'm sure the bing team can lend some heuristics to mining the major themes from the input.

Sure, accepting public feedback involves a large percentage of noise. But not accepting feedback because of the noise (or any other reason) is not an acceptable position either. Connect was supposed to partially get around the noise issue. Having relative obscurity and the need to be loggged in filters out a lot of the noise, and the upvoting system helps elevate those issues that are most popular. The biggest problem with Connect is that in most cases it is dead. It only gets used for products that are in public beta/ctp/rc status. There aren't feedback channels for released products ... at least that I could find. I can sympathise with the OP's request, since I have wanted the same thing. Posting your issues to a generic blog, or Facebook, or adding a me too comment to some tech journalist's article and hoping someone from MS will see it is not a good form of feedback. Sending the evangelists to talk to focus groups and major customers only gives a very small sampling of user needs. There's no question it is a very difficult issue to deal with, but a company with the market and resources of MS can and should do better.

Great, the post editor is broken again and losing all the formatting.

2 hours ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

Read the comments on the ieblog, full of such incredible wisdom as "For gods sake please stop making browsers", then imagine what that would translate to if you opened it up to comments across the entirety of Windows. Do you really think paying people to sort through the thousands of "OMG! Just use teh linuxz!" and "My printer isn't working. Fix it" comments on the off-chance that somewhere in amongst all that feedback is something useful is a productive use of time and money?

You don't have to look hard on the web to find good feedback about Windows without having to explictly ask for it and I suspect you'll find looking at that (along with other face to face discussions with customers) to be a far better way of discerning useful improvements.

hmm I think we agree to disagree on this one.

How Google do it

How Microsoft do it

59 minutes ago,Simo wrote

*snip*

hmm I think we agree to disagree on this one.

How Google do it

How Microsoft do it

I'm going to bet that Google get a relatively small amount of suggestions. I'm also going to bet that Microsoft would get an enormous amount of suggestions, very little of which would be useful or even constructive.

Meanwhile they have an enormous number of alternate routes for getting feedback like the TAP program, the Customer Experience Improvement telemetry, Product Support Services, etc - all of which are probably less noisy ways of getting a picture of what's needed.

You could email Stephen Sinovsky. He usually replies with "Cool, we'll look into it." and you'll never know if they'll actually look into it or not (most likely not), but it'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing you got a reply from Sinofsky or Sinofsky's secretary (most likely the latter).