With the coming of Server Core, there's been a lot of talk of the modularization of Windows. This has been long-coming, of course. The first time I remember hearing about this was around 2001. Those prophesies never seemed to come to, unfortunately -- at least, not in the time frame I was expecting. Well, as late to the game as it may be, it'll be welcome when it is here. What I'd like to see is for Microsoft to take that the extra mile and start making Microsoft Update be the source for installing and updating all Microsoft software. I thought about this after having to track down one after another piece of software online via MSDN or some random download page, which you never can tell if its the latest release or not. Managing it all thru Microsoft Update would be absolutely a dream come true.

Of course, this is only phase 1. Phase 2 of the "new" distro model would be to provide this as a service to othe customers. Allow others to integrate their update software into the Microsoft Update infrastructure. Of course, this would mean we'd need another re-branding of what was originally the Windows Update service. I can't think of any simple name for this, so you know it'll have to be one of those long names we all hate. Perhaps something like "Software Update for Windows" would be relatively simple. This could be a very lucrative offering, as I see it. I can think of a dozen permutations, but the result is all the same.

Ink Desktop is a great idea, but I can't stand it. Actually, I was able to use it 10 mins after installing it and haven't used it since. That's not a testament to how great of an idea it is, tho. If it weren't for this mouse vs. pen input issue I have, I'd love it to death. Well, I'd like it a lot, at least. My problem is two-fold. First, you can't select anything on the desktop when the app is running because clicking the desktop is treated as inking. This is my main aggravation. Second, I never plan on inking with my mouse, so don't treat the mouse like a pen. I can't imagine anyone would try to write with their mouse, but if that's important, provide some configuration setting to allow me to disable the mouse for inking. Without these two things, I don't see myself ever using Ink Desktop.

For the most part, I've been very happy with the spell checker and thesaurus (synonym) features of Office. One thing I'd like to see, tho, is the ability to spell check and/or lookup synonyms/antonyms from any application. This could be done using a global shortcut that would spell check based on what's in the clipboard or just open a window where you could copy/paste in what you want to check. There are various add-ons and extensions that will add this capability to browsers and other tools, but I want one dictionary/thesaurus that's global. I can see this going into Office or Windows; either way, I'd be happy. If you want this to be provided to everyone, put it in Windows; otherwise, put it in Office. I'm thinking of Word's spell checker and thesaurus shortcuts are F7 and Shift-F7, so I'm thinking Win-F7 and Win-Shift-F7 would be perfect.

There is a tool I found which does this, which was a partial inspiration to this suggestion, but I'd really like to see a global solution with a shared dictionary. Honestly, the clipboard may not be the best data source for this, but it's the only shared location I can think of that wouldn't reach into running applications to pull out data, which I'd see as a security risk.

When I'm running Windows Live FolderShare, I'd like to know what machines I have up and running. I have numerous machines running FolderShare and don't always know which machines are up, so having a submenu off the tray icon would be very helpful. All I'm looking for is an informative list, so clicking them isn't all that important to me. Ideally, tho, this could be a trafficlight-style link, where green represents a computer that's online; yellow might mean the computer is online, but not yet synchronized or maybe the status hasn't been identified, yet; and, red would obviously mean it's down. Looking at it another way, disconnected computers could be disabled and the status identifiers could represent the sync process or something like that. Going the extra mile, these items could even link to the FolderShare website on the remote file explorer page for that computer. That would be pretty nice.

Edit: This has been suggested in two ways: a list of available devices with an online/offline status icon (green/red); and, a notification balloon message that pops up when another client changes status.

Don't take this as me complaining about UAC. On the contrary, I like what it provides. Personally, I don't think I need it, since I haven't been affected by a virus since I don't know when; but that's not the point. I'd rather keep it on since I haven't reached the point of total aggravation, yet. I was thinking of a simple shortcut to get around it, tho. I can even provide a simple analogy that most people will understand and relate to. Anyone who's been using the web for more than 3-5 years has probably been annoyed by browser popups. What did we do about this? We created popup blockers. Well, what is UAC if not a popup? Granted, I have to admit that a UAC popup is much better than a browser popup. So, popup blockers are great and all, but what happens when you want the popup? You held down Shift or Ctrl when clicking on the link and it worked just fine. This is what UAC needs, in my opinion. Windows does a good job of telling you about when UAC will popup by providing the shield icon on buttons and next to links. When I'm about to click one of these, I'd like to be able to hold the Windows key, for instance, to bypass UAC. I think this would make life a little easier and more tolerable for those of us who know when to bypass UAC beforehand.

This is probably a suggestion that will never be implemented in Windows Live FolderShare, but I'd love to have the ability to support versioning. This drastically changes the service, tho. This would essentially be a personal CM repository. Perhaps FolderShare on Vista might solve this in part with the built-in versioning, but what I'm looking for is the ability to share that version history with multiple clients -- namely personal computers, but multiple users would be nice, too. Every time I think about this, I question whether or not it's really appropriate for the service, and I don't think I can say it is, but it is definitely a nice-to-have. For those who have the time and resources for it, I'd suggest using Subversion and TortoiseSVN; but FolderShare with versioning, a lot of this would be done for you. Perhaps this could be an additional service for the WL team. Hmm...

Edit: While not exactly version control, there have been a few suggestions the FolderShare team has received to keep a copy of files on a server. Additionally, there was a "check-in/check-out" suggestion. Together, these are the beginning of version control. I doubt we'll ever see it, but you never know.

For anyone who's seen and/or used TortoiseSVN  knows how great it is and how informative the icon overlays are. In a perfect world, Windows Live FolderShare would take one from the Tortoise book and provide both context menu commands to manage sync'ed data and provide a visual identifier of what has been changed locally and needs to be sync'ed and even conflicts, if appropriate. Having this would be absolutely awesome.

Edit: A suggestion has already been made to provide "better shell integration." This doesn't go into the level of integration I'd like to see, but it's a start. We'll have to see how that matures.

I completely understand that I can't sync between two computers when one isn't online, but I don't understand why I can't setup a sync directory. I should be able to install FolderShare on one machine and setup all the directories I'd like to sync. Then, at some later time, subscribe to those sync's when I install FolderShare on another machine. I don't think this is a huge deal, but it was a minor aggravation for me when I first got setup.

Edit: Someone already suggested that files should be sync'ed to an online storage somewhere, which would enable the "offline sync" I'm looking for. No word on any implementation.

One thing I expected when I first started using Windows Live FolderShare was the ability to configure sync directories from my computer, as opposed to the website. I'd really like to have that capability from the context menu.