BTW one answer to your findings is that you are probably using Windows XP/2003, which is lacking some console APIs. On these, you would have to right-click the console (which only works with QuickEdit disabled) or execute $psplus.ShowProperties(). In that dialog, you can set colors, font etc., and once you defined that, the ugly black border will be gone as well ;-). With Vista and beyond, you can do the same thing via a toolbar and even scale font size seamlessly. Here, the entire experience is much smoother. I’ll brainstorm with the others how we can extend that to XP.

Regarding price, I hear you and take the discussion to the team. I am sure you can appreciate that a professional user will probably have a ROI within just a couple of hours, $149 being a rather low price tag (the Swiss Microsoft Site commented our prices as “deal of the year”, clearly from an IT Pro perspective). But again, I’d love everyone to benefit from PowerShellPlus and will see what can be done.

1. It takes a long time to startup.
2. Quick edit NOT set by default.
3. The Learning centre pops up - over the top of the console. I’d prefer to see it pop-under or pop-to the side.
4. There is no “save” when changing Powershell options so it’s not clear whether options are in fact being saved.
5. Putting options under “Extras” menu seems somewhat counter to normal windows standards - I did not find it quickly.
6. There’s no option I can find for setting console colours. I set these in my PSH profile AND the shortcut I launch PowerShell with, but with PS+ I get a non-seamless experience. I can provide a screen shot if you’d like. It’s ugly imho.

And further to 6, I get a ugly black line between the main window and the pop-up windows on the right. I can provide screenshots of this.

If this is the worst I can find, then I’m thinking it’s a solid product. I now use it regularly on my laptop (too busy this week to put it onto my desktops, but since I’m mainly developing with PowerShell on my laptop that’s OK!). So far, the product seems solid, reliable and robust - it’ll make a great addition when it’s released.

Regarding price - like I said, it feels a bit expensive. At a few hundred dollars, I’d have to be doing a lot of PS work, or doing “serious” to justify it. At US$50, let me paypal you the cash now. If you see what I mean. But I suspect you’ll make more going for the serious users (that don’t care about the price as long as they get quality) than the occasional dabller for whom price IS an issue.

Keep up the great work Tobias - I’m sure you have a great winner of a product here!

I am glad you like and use PS+! We’ve been working on this now for two years and had more than 100.000 downloads and a quite amazing customer feedback.

Re “clearly beta”, the answer probably is: I am happy to see that the kind of issues we still have in our beta are of similar type and severity that you can find in any of the RTM’d products, be it Sapien, PowerGUI or AdminScriptEditor (not to mention MS V2 Graphical Host), so I take this as encouragement that we are right on track for the final towards the end of Sep. If you have any specific feedback re: niggles etc, please share. We’ll make sure it is taken care of.

PowerShell is a very new and quite complex technology so all vendors need some time and experience until the dust settles…

Re price: I’d love to give away the product for free, but you know what happened with PS+ V1 and our very liberal licensing? Most people used it but did not bother to pay. I learned the hard way that pricing is a gut feeling thing that only works to a certain point.

Since we want to continue our vision and provide outstanding quality and support, pricing is simple math now: take the investments necessary and pick a price that covers it. Make sure people using the product will get value fast that makes up this price in a matter of hours so everyone is feeling good. Period. During Beta, the price is $79 and will rise to $149 after that.

Couldn’t we make it free and sponsor it somehow? You know how it is: peanuts aren’t *really* free, you pay them with the beer. In our case, we decided to transparently charge a moderate amount.

Cheerio, Tobias (maker of PowerShellPlus)

As far as price goes, all I can say is that I use ps+ all day.

As to price point, I’m not sure what the right price should be. A few hundred dollars seems a bit expensive, I’d put it as US$50. What do other folks think about pricing??