• Xhieron@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all. I just had a small argument with my 11 year old about how not-a-big-deal-who-cares this is, and it basically ended with us agreeing to disagree since it’ll be his problem and his kids’ problem.

    And the problem is normalizing the notion that an OS doesn’t need to include a non-subscription word processor. The entire point of this move is to shift the OS Overton Window in favor of consumers accepting and expecting that features like word processors, spreadsheets, etc., should be installed separately and paid for on a subscription basis despite previous iterations of the same software being feature complete on install and purchased at a set, non-recurring fee.

    WordPad hasn’t been anybody’s first choice for a word processor in years, but it was included with Windows and did the bare minimum for unsophisticated users. Now we’re entering an era in which those users will as a matter of course buy off-the-shelf computers that come pre-installed without WordPad, but rather with a trial of Office Fuck-You-Pay-Me Edition. Those users may well discover that after their first six months with their new computer (that has made Microsoft more money selling their data than they paid for it), they suddenly get a pop-up informing them that their trial is up and MS wants $99.99 to release the documents they’re holding hostage.

    It’s a step backwards for consumers in general, so even for the sophisticated of us who are least likely to be personally affected by this change, there’s definitely cause for alarm.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Tbh I use Notepad way more than anything for note making.
      If it needs to be formatted, OneNote is free to use and can be saved in any cloud (if there is a shortcut like OneDrive or Dropbox in the Windows explorer)
      If it needs to be free and not very sophisticated, I’d look around for a markdown based editor.

      If all of that fails, I will use Word.
      Never used Wordpad in 15 years (of 24 years of existence) except while trying to open word but Windows suggesting Wordpad first.

    • kescusay@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Likely scenario, honestly.
      I really don’t worry about it, though.
      Not to brag, but it doesn’t bother me.
      Understand, there is a solution.
      X marks the spot.

      (Yeah, I know, that’s kind of stupid. But it seemed funny in my head.)

      • Emerald@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I can’t read you

        I’ve given everything, but you seem distant

        I can’t feel you

        Your heart is somewhere else, it’s missin’

        What if I read back to you?

        You have a piece, but there’s two

        Someone please get this reference.

    • macrocephalic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I disagree. I don’t think a rich text editor should be part of the OS as it’s not there to operate the computer. An OS should be the tools to run applications and manage your computer. There are a bunch of apps which are so small that it makes sense to include them - like a calculator and text editor, but everything else should be optional.

      • tabular@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There should be an OS out there for you which doesn’t come with a rich text editor. [If there is ever a time to mention GNU+Linux in a MS thread then now is that time.] For most people however, not including it is a needless barrier to entry.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Then they ask their grandson or work it dept what they should do and both will answer libre office is free

    • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I used it for my damn resume because I didn’t have word, didn’t need office. I also liked it because when friends asked me to review a document I could open word documents with it, I would do that sometimes even when I had office because WordPad opened faster and I didn’t need perfect formatting.

      I think it is safe to say that your 11 year old is factually wrong lol. But it is okay that they don’t understand how bad this is because the concept of how multiple businesses have switched to subscription based models even in places we wouldn’t expect, like a monthly subscription allowing already installed hardware in your car to actually function, cause it’s just 11 year Olds don’t have a great concept of bills and money at that level yet. I say wait for their first complaint of it as an adult and then put on your carefully choreographed and practiced “I told you so” dance

      Okay kidding aside I think it is absolutely wonderful this is something you didn’t just have a conversation with your young kid about but that you had to agree to disagree, you sound like a fantastic parent who actually fosters a relationship with their kid. And probably only rarely says I told you so.

    • Wooki@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why in gods name don’t you use libre office. It’s so much better than word and excel for rent

      • Frost Wolf@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Because libre office is not compatible with many others. You can open it sure but there’s no guarantee that opening .doc or .docx will have broken formatting. Not good for those in the academia or workplace where formatting are strictly enforce.

        • Wooki@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Absolute bullshit. Microsoft moved to the Open Office document standard after they were forced to and Libre is renown for its ability to open Microsoft’s documents without issue. I have opened countless personally.

          Do yourself a favour and get off the junk office suite that hasn’t received a functional update in the last 10 years that wasn’t to improve its rent charging capacity.

  • jeffw@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, what is the point of Wordpad when you have Notepad and Word?

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Honestly I’m not too bummed, especially with open-source solutions like Notepad++, but it’s the end of an era! Also, Word is paid, and so Windows not having a built in free RTF editor is notable

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not all of us have Word, and Notepad doesn’t have rich text or the ability to open .doc files.

          • somedaysoon@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I probably haven’t thought if it for like 10 years myself but this post reminded me of it. I remember maybe 15 years ago using a portable version of it on a USB drive, and it was amazing.

  • 30mag@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Microsoft announced today that it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update as it’s no longer under active development

    I wonder what changes they’ve made to wordpad over the last 10 years… how many people have been working on it and stuff.

    This sort of implies that Notepad is still under active development. That’s weird to think about.

    • btaf45@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update as it’s no longer under active development

      It doesn’t need “active development” because it is perfect the way it is. Unix/Linux has tons of useful programs that haven’t been in active development for 40-50 years.

    • decadentrebel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t been using Wordpad for 20+ years. Notepad could do everything it does already. Then, you also have Firefox’s built-in inspect to tinker with code on the fly.

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Am completely expecting this to be due to falling office sales or fear that people will realize they don’t need expensive Office every few years when WordPad has 90% of functionality for daily use.

    I expect this will make a lot of people very angry since I know many users of WordPad.

    • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If you think WordPad is a replacement for Ms word then the reality is that you don’t do anything that requires word/write.

      And I am assuming you just mean word and not excel or PowerPoint because… Yeah

    • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They changed their licensing and specifically for robot users so I suspect it’s to funnel those users into licenses which is a lot more than consumers.

  • zerbey@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Only thing I used it for was when older versions of Notepad couldn’t handle larger text files. Now it can. So, no loss to me. Notepad going away would suck, that does at least get occasional use although Notepad++ is far superior.

    • 9point6@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Genuinely curious—why would someone choose to use notepad++ over something like VSCode in 2023?

      I can’t say I’ve used n++ in over a decade when I switched to sublime around 2010, moved again to VSCode about 5 years ago

      • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        NP++ is more lightweight and has some useful stuff builtin and easier to justify to IT dept to than a full IDE 🤷

        Personally I prefer pycharm and Atom for my home needs.

        • 9point6@lemmy.world
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          Justifying it to IT makes a lot of sense actually. Particularly if you need extensions. I’m lucky I get admin on my laptop where I work

          Interesting you’re using atom, actually! Is it still getting much love? I assumed development would go by the wayside once Microsoft bought GitHub a few years ago (as VSCode is almost an identical product)

          • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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            Yeah it’s on my personal machine, I use it alongside pycharm but it’s (atom) not my main IDE, I keep it because of a few things it does. I disagree vscode is the same, it’s a poorer implementation of pycharm IMHO. Just my opinion though everyone is different in workspace.

            • 9point6@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’m interested in what differs from atom about VSCode in your opinion. Wasn’t VSCode a fork of atom originally? edit: apparently not! When I was picking between the two about 5 years ago, they seemed almost identical to me

              I’m personally not a big fan of heavy IDEs like the jetbrains products, so VSCode being lighter than pycharm (or any of the IDEA products) is a bonus to me.

              • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Look at Atom community. Speed to load is night and day.

                For me, Vscode feels like a cheaper pycharm which is my primary IDE and wouldn’t change as I’ve tried vscode as an alt and it wasn’t good enough for how I work.

                • 9point6@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Fair play, everyone’s different, I work with another guy who swears by the jetbrains stuff, but it just seems very clunky to me every time I’ve tried it.

                  I’ll have to give atom another look then, though I’d say VSCode starts in about a second on my machine, so startup time alone probably wouldn’t be a reason for me to switch

  • lennybird@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, this blows. WordPad fills a niche between a full blown text editor and notepad. Most of my random daily notes use WordPad still when not OneNote.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I recently started using a markdown based note taking program called Joplin, that might be useful for you

    • royalbarnacle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t get why they aren’t retiring notepad instead. WordPad is just as light and fast while having more features.

      Not that I really care, I never touch either ever since MS basically stopped developing them 25 years ago. Notepad++, atom, etc, there are so many superb lightweight editors out there.

  • OscarRobin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t like Apple but they ship their devices with everything a basic user needs and if a high quality, completely for free. When you get a MacBook you don’t need to worry about finding and downloading an external app for almost anything - from viewing any kind of file, to basic photo and video editing, to document processing, etc. And they don’t track every minute thing you do and act like malware to try to make you use their products.

    • Molecular0079@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And they don’t track every minute thing you do

      You sure about that? I just bought my mom a new iPad Air yesterday and the setup process was maddeningly privacy invading. Name, address, and phone number just to install anything from the Apple store. Both me and my mom, who’s not tech savvy at all, thought it was crazy the amount of info we had to put in just to get a usable device.

      and act like malware to try to make you use their products.

      There was also so many preloaded garbage apps installed by default. Why are apps like Measure there? Yes when I want to measure something…I reach for an iPad…instead of…you know…a tape measure… Just because they’re first party apps doesn’t make this okay. Also, Apple’s ecosystem is famous for vendor lock-in.

      They may not be as blatant about it as Google is, but they’re every bit as bad tbh.

    • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      " And they don’t track every minute thing you do and act like malware to try to make you use their products."

      LOL ok

    • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      This is tru, however MacOS is still a lesser version of linux with a fancy skin. You have to get third party apps to support ntfs formatted drives.

    • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Tracking I will give you (based on current information…).

      But Microsoft has semiregularly been investigated for antitrust and monopolies over baking too much into the os. Hence splitting it out

      • OscarRobin@lemmy.world
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        They weren’t investigated for antitrust for baking stuff into the OS - it was for monopolizing various sectors and strong arming users and competitors. They’re allowed to have their own browser preinstalled, they just have to let you switch easily and remove it etc.

        • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They are literally in the process of needing to unbundle Teams from office in Europe.

          Regardless of the reasoning, MS has had eyes on it since the 90s and need to be incredibly careful what they do and don’t bundle together or preinstall. Whereas Apple can do whatever they want. That is why Apple comes with a bunch of shitty office products that only one person at any given company uses and Windows comes with a link to download them.

  • TheBlue22@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It was lighter than word or libre and had formatting, unlike simple word editors like notepad++. Bummer to see it go but surely there is (or will be) an alternative

    • Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      You can probably still install this. Just like paint (the old version) and the non ad filled solitaire etc

  • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Man fuck Microsoft. Killing a free app and replacing it with a paid app that has a subscription bundled.

    What the actual fuck!!?

    • PutangInaMo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s word pad though, do you really ever use it? I use notepad for a quick temp fix in a pinch, I haven’t used word pad in like 15 years.

      • pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Removed as a protest against the community’s support for campaigns to bring about the deaths of members of marginalized groups, and opposition to private entities working to prevent such campaigns, together with it’s mindless flaming and downvoting of anyone who disagrees.

        • PutangInaMo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Honestly if I need to format, that gets done in the app that I’m going to send whatever text.

          Whatever goes into notepad for me will either get deleted, go into notepad++, or whatever app I’m going to send it (office).

          Sounds like you could benefit from replacing WordPad with Notepad++.

          • pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Removed as a protest against the community’s support for campaigns to bring about the deaths of members of marginalized groups, and opposition to private entities working to prevent such campaigns, together with it’s mindless flaming and downvoting of anyone who disagrees.