You can fix and improve PowerShell. Really.

Did you know that Microsoft actively solicits bug reports and suggestions for many products, including Windows PowerShell?

Head over to http://connect.microsoft.com/powershell. Sign in with your Microsoft .NET Live Hotmail Passport ID (or whatever they're calling it these days), and you can not only submit, but also see other users' suggestions and even vote on them.

Now, I can't speak for every product team, but let me tell you: The PowerShell team not only reads these, but they agonize over them. They pay a lot of attention. You might not get immediate feedback, but there's a reason for that: PowerShell is a core part of the Windows operating system. For a ton of very valid business reasons, Microsoft doesn't want to talk much about things they're thinking of doing or planning to do (that's what caused all the ruckus with Vista, after all), but prefers to wait until they're actually for-sure doing it to talk about it. So even if they're hard at work implementing your suggestion or bug fix, you may not see feedback on the Connect site until the product actually ships a beta, Community Technology Preview (CTP), release, or something.

But rest assured, they're reading your stuff.

How do I know? 

Last week I attended the 2011 Global MVP Summit, an event where Microsoft hosts a few thousand MVPs from across the world. Because we're under heavy Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), they're free to share a bit more information with us than they do the general public. For example, they're a bit more free to tell us some of their ideas, bounce them off of us, and see what we think. There's no guarantee that they'll all come to light, of course, but it's a good way for them to get a sense of what customers might think (we're not the only way they do that, of course).

Anyway, during the Summit the PowerShell team was able to bounce a lot of ideas off of us - and a LOT of those came directly from Connect. In fact, I hope they're able to put out some kind of public release notes when the next version of PowerShell eventually ships, so that you can see how much of the Connect feedback they acted upon. Sure, perhaps not everything they discussed with us will make it into the final product - but my point is that a lot of the direction for future versions of PowerShell is coming from Connect. 

So spread the word: If you have a suggestion, Connect with Microsoft and share it.