Noise operator?

[spewdog]

You can achieve that kind of setup with a Force operator....to prevent particles from blowing away, just restore their original position at the beginning of the time step and reset the velocity each frame as well.

Cheers! I don't exactly know how to do that, would that still work with rotation and scale as well? 

The noise operator would work similar to the 'Animated Geometry' feature in the shape operator, but instead of using animation from a modifier, it could use maxes 'noise controllers' or something similar in TyFlow. 

Cheers!

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Another way to achiev that is to use a wind force with zero strenght for the wind, but with a specified value for the turbulence only.

Another way is to create a plane or any other geometry object and apply a standard 3dsmax noise modifier to it. Then pick this object as position object for your particles or you can directly use the surface birth operator.
Now the particles whobble along the noise the noise-modifier applys to the object. When you hide the geo object it looks like the particles do that movement by their own.

Another way is, that Tyson just adds a simple noise operator, to protect his customers from having to make annoying workarounds :p.

Thanks for the tips. 

I tried zero strength for wind but it still blows them away. 

That object noise is a good work around, but I think only for position?

Would be good to rotate and scale randomly with noise, like a pulse or throb effect.