really microsoft... really?

After the amount of times people have complained about things not being easily found on the microsoft site you would of thought you'd of fixed it by now.

While searching for powershell...  i come across the Blog... which doesn't link to where to get powershell from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/

http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?form=MSHOME&mkt=en-us&setlang=en-us&q=powershell doesn't bring up a direct download in the top result.  How hard can it be to get your stuff in order?

We need nuget for Windows, not just for VS

When I installed Visual Studio Pro, PowerShell also got installed.

@Jaz: It's not as hard as you make it out. Simply going to the obvious http://www.microsoft.com/powershell as well as the first link in the search results you posted take you to the landing site for "everything PowerShell" (actual url is http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/dd742419.aspx).This page has a Download menu option prominantly on top.

@Jaz: Umm, "powershell 2.0 download" ... first link.

1 hour ago, Richard.Hein wrote

@Jaz: Umm, "powershell 2.0 download" ... first link.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/ doesn't have a PS download link. I think that was the point.

I agree with Jaz. Microsoft doesn't connect the dots too well. The owner of the blog should have had the foresight to provide a link to the main PS site that they were blogging about.

This kind of thing with Microsoft -- "hey all you have to do is X"  when you shouldn't have to is my least favorite thing about Microsoft and its biggest fanboys. Sure you can't please everyone but you don't have to be stupid either.

@DeathByVisualStudio:  The blog is a blog ... sure we can politely ask the blog owner to put a link in, but seriously, is it that hard to do an actual search for yourself?  There's a ton of links related to Powershell, why should they necessarily have the download as the top link?  Adding "download" to the keywords refines the search, and it seems to be the logical thing to do rather than post to the Coffeehouse complaining that it's hard to find.

http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?form=MSHOME&mkt=en-us&setlang=en-us&q=powershell has the download page as the 3rd link. http://search.microsoft.com/Results.aspx?q=powershell+download&mkt=en-US&FORM=QBME1&l=1&refradio=0 has it as the 1st link.  'Nuff said!

 [Edit:  Removed harsh language.]

Finding anything on microsoft.com is unnecessarily difficult, made far worse by the fact it's often nigh on impossible to be sure you're actually downloading the latest version as that's often not the one that tops the search. The whole thing really needs a rethink and an overhaul.

I just clicked the link Richard.Hein provided on search.microsoft.com , and it's actually the 4th if you count the 'Editor's choice'.  Apparently, the Editor wants me to go to a forum site to figure out where the product is located.

Then, over on the right side of the screen, the 'related downloads' seem to want me to download PS 1.0 instead of 2.0.

Last, though, is that the link that supposedly takes me to powershell 2.0 ACTUALLY takes me to Windows Management Framework which happens to include powershell 2.0.  But wait, over on the right side of that page are more links that refer to searches for powershell 2.0, powershell v 2, and powershell 2.

Ya know what, microsoft.com?  All that vagueness is a pain in the @ss and far too complicated and I don't have the time to wade through it, so I'll skip it.  See how that works?  You lost a convert to what is probably a cool product because your search sucks and has sucked since its inception.

@ScanIAm:I don't think you can entirely blame the search, it finds what you are looking for, it's just that there's such a mishmash of stuff cobbled together in an such ill though out way that it's difficult to know if you've even found what you wanted when you finally do.

And trying to link to something on download.microsoft.com without accidently ending up with a link to an outdated version seems to be equally difficult, so it's no surprise blog authors either avoid it or just do it wrong.

I thought Powershell ships with Windows, why do you need to download it?

12 minutes ago, AndyC wrote

@ScanIAm:I don't think you can entirely blame the search, it finds what you are looking for, it's just that there's such a mishmash of stuff cobbled together in an such ill though out way that it's difficult to know if you've even found what you wanted when you finally do.

And trying to link to something on download.microsoft.com without accidently ending up with a link to an outdated version seems to be equally difficult, so it's no surprise blog authors either avoid it or just do it wrong.

Proposal: Microsoft's Download Center should use URLs like these:

download.microsoft.com/products/powershell <-- page containing information and a link to all the relevant information

download.microsoft.com/products/powershell/latest <-- for the latest version of powershell (i.e. 2.0)

download.microsoft.com/products/powershell/2/0/ <-- for the 2.0-specific release

download.microsoft.com/products/powershell/1/latest <-- for the latest release of the 1.x version of PS

I'm not sure what the problem is. If I want to search for downloads, I first go to Microsoft Downloads. If you search from the main page, you can refine your results to only Microsoft Downloads from the search results page.

The search results are ordered by popularity, so if Powershell 2.0 doesn't come up on top, then it's because Powershell 1.0 is more popular. It takes all of .5 seconds to type "2.0" after "Powershell" in the search box. Or .75 seconds to change the sort order from "Newest to oldest" if you don't feel like taking your right hand off the mouse.

By looking at the way Powershell 2.0 is packaged, it's pretty obvious that it's no longer considered a standalone product. You either have to download it as part of the Powershell 2.0 SDK, or as part of the Windows Management Framework.

You can also see that you can't download it separately for Windows 7. It's only available for Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2. As somebody already mentioned, it's already part of Windows 7. Perhaps this is why it's not considered a popular download, whereas Powershell 1.0 is.

 Edit: Powershell 2.0 is included with Windows Server R2 as well.

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

@CreamFilling512 New versions do but our windows 2003 server doesn't so i needed it for that

@ScanIAm generally hits the nail on the head.  If you look at the search results I originally linked to.. which one of them actually says Download Powershell...

The 1st one says "Scripting with Windows PowerShell", I want to download powershell, i may want to script later but first i want to download it, so thats not an obvious first choice.

2nd Link is "Windows PowerShell Getting Started Guide", I might be able to download Powershell from here but still it's not an obvious link..

3rd Link is "Running Windows PowerShell Scripts", I doubt I can download it from here

4th Link is "Windows PowerShell".  This looks like the money shot, it looks like it has everything in the title that I want.  but where does it link you to... is it the download page? is it heck... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb978526.aspx what the hell is this? Still no download link on there.

It really is a shame they make these things so hard to find.

6 minutes ago, Jaz wrote

It really is a shame they make these things so hard to find.

What's so difficult about typing "powershell 2.0 windows server 2003" into the search box?

Your complaint is akin to doing a web search on "dog" and complaining that an article on beagles isn't the first link.

38 minutes ago, cbae wrote

The search results are ordered by popularity, so if Powershell 2.0 doesn't come up on top, then it's because Powershell 1.0 is more popular.

The trouble with that approach is that a newly released bit of software is often overshadowed by heavy downloads of previous beta releases and even long established products can be buried under a multitude of bits of documentation, which may or may not be up to date or relevant.

@cbae: sorry but your analogy is completely wrong.

Powershell is a Microsoft property, I'm searching from the main Microsoft site, not google, or askjeeves or twitter, but the actual main www.Microsoft.com site.  I don't see why I need to type in what you suggested to get to the powershell download site when powershell is the main keyword and the only keyword that matters.

5 minutes ago, Jaz wrote

@cbae: sorry but your analogy is completely wrong.

Powershell is a Microsoft property, I'm searching from the main Microsoft site, not google, or askjeeves or twitter, but the actual main www.Microsoft.com site.  I don't see why I need to type in what you suggested to get to the powershell download site when powershell is the main keyword and the only keyword that matters.

No, the analogy is right. You're expecting a single word to yield the EXACT context under which you're searching. There are not only multiple versions of the product, there are mulitple builds for the different OS versions.

Besides, even with a search on "powershell", the 3rd link brings you to the knowledge base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968929

This page has direct links to the individual download pages for the different OS versions:

Windows Management Framework Core (WinRM 2.0 and Windows PowerShell 2.0)

 Download
the Windows Management Framework Core for Windows Server 2003 package
now.