14 DAY TRIAL // Plain vanilla testers need to stick to the official Windows 8 blog and forum to share feedback with Microsoft, but some lucky early adopters get to send input on the next version of Windows directly to the company. As far as Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division is concerned, the “Windows Developer Preview: General OS questions” is the best place to share Windows 8 suggestions, requests, bug reports, etc.
When he announced the launch of the Windows Developer Preview in mid-September 2011 at BUILD, the Windows chief also pointed potential testers to the forums with the following message:
“I wanted to offer a pointer to the best place to have discussions about Windows 8. Please head over to the forums we have set up to discuss the product and answer questions. As we have seen, the commenting mechanism is not a great place to have a wide variety of topics different than the topic of the post while keeping track of the discussion. We set up this short URL to be easy to remember: http://win8.ms/forums gets you to the general forum.”
Things are a tad different for BUILD participants, for example. BUILD attendees received instructions on how to leverage Microsoft Connect in order to share their feedback with Microsoft.
MSDN subscribers also have access to a more direct live to the software giant when it comes down to testing Windows 8 and providing input, namely the Windows Send Feedback Tool.
The company is offering the Windows 8 Send Feedback Tool exclusively through Microsoft Connect.
As I’ve already said, those that attended BUILD already have the instructions to get to the Windows 8 Send Feedback Tool downloads.
For subscribers to MSDN is almost just as simple. They need to sign in using their Windows Live ID, make their way to subscriber downloads, and find the Windows Developer Preview bits.
Some of the downloads offered via MSDN, under Product Keys, offer a small code snipped designed to let testers join the Windows Developer Preview feedback program. What this means is that they get access to the Windows 8 Send Feedback Tool through Connect, and they can start leveraging it to send their input to Microsoft.