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.
I get where you’re coming from but I think you’re overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it’d be a big deal. Now it’s rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.
Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.
I’m less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it’s products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That’s the real problem - not losing WordPad.
At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it’s allowed to get away with abusing it’s dominant position to force it’s products on consumers.
Or you know, google docs is a thing which is free and imo works better than word
Google docs is still trash though.
A web browser is not a word processor no matter how much they tart it up. If the thing isn’t saving a file to my local drive that is in a common format It’s not worth putting your effort into.
So many kids are going to grow up not having the concept where data lives and what the failure modes are.
I’d like to normalize the notion that an OS shouldn’t include any application software except for a browser you can use to install other things. Let people pick what they want to use and install it themselves.
Yeah, just download LibreOffice or use a free service like Google Docs.
or just WPS if you hate these and don’t hate China more than Microsoft
Better yet, the OS should just include a desktop environment with simple utilities and a package manager to install the applications you want. It will make users less likely to run into malware while searching for the programs in the web
Wasn’t there an anti trust or monopoly suite against Microsoft for bundled IE back in the day? Funny how times change, though I agree it’s not easy to get a preferred browser without one. Mean it never was overly simple but they were on so many CDs mailed out back then. Think it has to do with some IE and Windows integration too so not just cause they bundled it.
The problem with IE4 is that it was designed in such a way that it was deeply integrated into the operating system, such that it could not be uninstalled.
It’s completely reasonable now to ship an operating system without a browser, as long as there’s some kind of “app store” or “package manager” through which a user can install whatever browser they want (provided it’s available through said store, of course).
I think a file manager, text editor and command prompt are pretty essential too. And when you’ve added those, where exactly is the limit where it becomes “application software”?
I don’t have an answer for that, but I know Wordpad is definitely not essential and I doubt anyone would use it if it didn’t come with Windows
I think it’s worth separating the two related but distinct concepts of what is a part of the operating system itself (for example, the actual file manager) and what is pre-installed or bundled with the operating system (games like Minesweeper).
I agree with you that a rich text editor definitely shouldn’t be part of the OS. But should it be a bundled part that ships with the desktop environment, the way Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS/ChromeOS all come with photo library software, basic image editors, media players, browser, email client, etc.? These applications aren’t strictly necessary to use or maintain the system itself, so maybe they shouldn’t have some kind of privileged use of the OS’s functionality, but there’s no harm in bundling in the installation defaults.
I don’t think a rich text editor is an important enough function to necessarily be preinstalled with the OS, but I can see an argument, at least. There’s a reason why Windows shipped with one since the beginning, and why MacOS and KDE and Gnome each have a default that very few people actually use regularly.
Yeah, even Apple includes the iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) for free on Macs and iPads, no subscription needed.
The cost of the full Mac apps and OS is in the cost of the hardware. At least it’s one upfront cost. Surely the way windows is going can’t be popular or sustainable.
As it should be. We pay for it on Windows and Mac…
piracy theme intensifies
Office is one of the easiest things to pirate. It 1. is very popular 2. has an official mass-activation way that can be easily exploited. I suspect we may have a spy in there
Or, y’know, just use LibreOffice with the tabs setting and contextual groups if you can afford experimental features
or if you still hate the UI just use WPS instead, who cares that it’s awful and from China you don’t have to payAlso, why would you even get Word or PowerPoint on macOS?? Excel I understand but these two??
why would you even get Word or PowerPoint on macOS?? Excel I understand but these two??
Main reason would be full compatibility with Office documents.
Let me clarify what I meant. I am saying that we pay for the OS which includes applications on both Mac and Windows. Only Mac gives us a free suite of office applications.
Ah, I get it now.
But you can pirate Windows for the exact same reasons.
Also, why would you even get Word or PowerPoint on macOS?? Excel I understand but these two??
Because Word and Powerpoint are what they know.
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.i use wordpad a lot for viewing docs (loads faster, uncluttered ui). occasionally writing them… and more than once instead of notepad for a text file (on a system without a notepad alternative available) because i needed more features.
i have a few clients that use wordpad as their ‘word processor’, lack of spelling check be damned.
microsoft must have run out of excuses for specifically not including one in it, seeing how recent windows has spell check baked-in to the os itself. so instead of losing a few dozen sales of office home and student or 365 by making wordpad just a little bit better for those who use it, they’re gonna be the assholes and take it out completely and push everyone to the damn cloud app or a 365 sub. fk 'em.
I only use emacs to write TeX notes.
Advertise and push Foss substitutes like libreoffice.
Then they ask their grandson or work it dept what they should do and both will answer libre office is free
Google Docs is free and has basically become the standard word processor for the “unsophisticated users” you’re worried about. It essentially comes with your OS because you only need a browser to use it.
I think your kid and his children will survive.
Making things in Google Docs is fine, but last I checked Google Docs just sucked at opening anything that wasn’t already a GDoc. LibreOffice Writer sometimes has formatting errors opening Word Docs, but it does a miles better job than Google Docs.
Also, I hate how normalized everything using the cloud (aka “Someone Else’s Hard Drive”) for no reason is.
It’s too bad Linux isn’t more normalized. For those very simple users (and for the more sophisticated) Linux is probably much better than Windows at this point.
No ads, free software, updates can be very simple and stable, less security issues.
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 am in a support group with over 100 senior citizens in it. Getting a file with a *.rtf extension used to be a thing, but it hasn’t been a thing in years. I do get *.doc and *.docx files so they’re probably getting lured into Office like you said even before Wordpad is removed.
WordPad was a fast and efficient way to view doc files without loading into LibreOffice or any other office suite, or to make rich text documents quickly. But alas, we have to go to the cloud for our notes now…
Seriously. Fuck OneNote with a cactus.
Do the ultimate OP solution and host your own nextcloud. It has built in office and everything google drive has.
Notepad++ does that too
I mean, I use LibreOffice, but for people not that tech savvy it sucks they won’t have a basic rich text tool included with Windows.
of course, gotta push more people to that godawful office 365 crap somehow
Seriously, the market share of Wordpad users is so small Microsoft absolutely does not care
They must not be able to spy on people thru it
To be replaced by a link to WordPad Bing AI Edition
Ew. I’m annoyed by how correct you likely are.
Upcoming:
Direct image link“Not able to generate content that is biased.”
Well that’s a fucking lie.
It already exists btw: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/clippy-by-firecube/9NWK37S35V5T
I love Clippy. It’s cool that he can answer all kinds of questions and stuff like that, but I only got him to be a little desktop companion. I wish he had a little more personality to him. His jokes are dry and he’s always saying that he’s my Windows assistant. His “conversations” can be cute at times, I just wish he wasn’t so relentless in his pursuit to assist. I don’t really need help from Clippy, I never did. I need Clippy’s companionship.
—Andrea, 2023-08-22
Subwcription-bqsed, like freaking Solitaire
Slightly annoyed about this, as I do use Wordpad (it’s lightweight and useful for quick notes that I want to mark up with bold and italic). I don’t always want to watch Word or Libreoffice load for twenty to thirty seconds.
Shitty decision, happy to be Wordpad’s one fan.
What about Notepad? I use it for the same quick notes
Doesn’t have formatting, unless Notepad has got really adventurous at some point in the last decade or two.
I recently noticed notepad now displays line numbers, so there has been some improvement… But it still shits the bed if you try to open a file that’s more than a few megs…
I mean, I’d never use Notepad. Download Notepad++, it’s better in literally every way.
Oh yes, I use notepad++ regularly. I opened something with notepad by accident the other day and happened to notice the change.
Same boat. I have been using WordPad and .rtf format for all my notes for maybe 15 years.
I’ve been meaning to jump to a markdown editor for a long time, and after this news I’ve already started using MarkText. I probably should have jumped ship a long time ago, but at least I’m on the path now.
I will have to figure out a neat way to convert my .rtf notes to .md.Update: I’ve found Pandoc, it’s a command line tool for which I’ve made a script for converting my .rtf files to .md.I’ve been using Joplin for a few years, syncing through Dropbox, and I like it. Mostly through the Linux terminal UI + vim though.
There’s dozens of us!
Yeah, when I want to just jot some words down quick in Windows, Wordpad has always been my go-to, but main thing for me is opening .txt files. Maybe I’m dumb and there’s some Notepad default layout thing I never bothered figuring out, but I don’t want to have to scroll right to read long lines of text.
This place really hates MS. Can’t believe some of the comments here.
Yeah it’s really strange. I’m not a fan of MS by any means, but I’ve found myself making so many pro-MS comments on Lemmy just because the userbase leans so heavily pro-Linux and anti-MS.
Lemmy and other Fediverse sites tend to attract folks who prefer FOSS. Early Reddit was that way too!
It’s not just preferring FOSS, though – it’s as if people have to publicly perform their hatred of Microsoft.
thats what anger does usually
It shouldn’t be that strange. Linux nerds are a huge Lemmy demographic.
Much more up on new technology, FOSS, and privacy issues etc. Than the general population. Good fit for Lemmy.
And then getting downvoted by people who just disagree with your opinion. I’m one of the Reddit refugees so I don’t know if we brought that with us or Lemmy was like that before but it’s sad to see.
That’s why downvote buttons exist? If you want to express your opinion on the internet, go ahead, but you should be prepared for the possibility that it might not be a popular opinion.
That’s why downvote buttons exist?
No (and not downvoted) … it’s about controlling visibility.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html
My take: Upvote the stuff other people should see. Downvote the stuff that should have never been here at all. You don’t have to agree or disagree, you can even have no opinion. But if you find it worthwhile to others, upvote it. Detrimental, downvote it.
It’s just that it’s boring. I’d rather have an interesting debate. Downvoting everything you simply disagree with just leads to groupthink forums.
Those downvotes aren’t stopping you from having a discussion. They’re just hurting your pride.
Downvote buttons are meant to be used for comments that don’t contribute to the discussion or are plainly completely wrong, not for opinions you disagree with. But most people can’t stand being disagreed with on things they feel passionately about, so they will still downvote where they merely disagree.
You might need to brush up on the difference between theory and practice.
MS has a history which informs what their fututre actions are likely to be. If you can’t believe the comments here perhaps you have not heard that history. If you have then consider that lemmy is free software and so you’re more likely to find that way of thinking here.
My goto for distrust of MS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
My goto for distrust of MS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
There’s not a single reference on that page that’s less than 20 years old. Yes, Microsoft did some anticompetitive stuff back when Bill Gates was CEO, but it’s absurd to suggest that that still “informs what their future actions are likely to be”. A lot has changed since the 1990s.
Not to mention the amount of people who think this is about notepad.
I mean, not many people are in the loving Microsoft camp. Tolerate maybe.
A broken clock can be right twice a day. Unless someone keeps playing with the dials.
As a former user, and an hardcore fanboy, I loved MS and Windows. They made computers accessible for the general public. The OS and the office suite were great. The sheer amount of available software for it was phenomenal. They even decided to publish games, which meant quality!
Until they decided to break things.
XP was a great OS, Vista wasn’t. Then 7 was back to being good just for 8 to be not as good. Then Cortana and Edge and the push for cloud computing.
What worked, worked well and was actually useful was changed, removed, phased out…
GNU/Linux is not without its dramas and difficulties but we can expect a good degree of continuity between each version of a software (I’m looking a you, Gnome!). And if we’re that hell bent on having that specific specific piece of software or OS setup, well, we can.
MS by contrast just chucks the good things out and doesn’t even let them floating around as something users may add to their system.
Does someone remembers the PowerToys collection?
PowerToys is alive and well, and updated regularly. More features now too.
PowerToys is very much live and available for download. I use it daily.
Unpopular opinion: Vista was actually a good step forward, but the hardware of the time wasn’t up for the task which made it run like dogshit, and hence the public perception. It brought in better memory management, and UAC for better security among other things.
What worked, worked well and was actually useful was changed, removed, phased out…
MS by contrast just chucks the good things out and doesn’t even let them floating around as something users may add to their system. Cortana, widely hated and unused, was phased out for one… wordpad being gone is so insignificant, it wasn’t even very good at its primary task.
They often replace things, e.g. the Photos app had a Video editor built in but now that’s a separate and better app. I think they’re doing a pretty good job of their software range actually.
What bugs me about Windows is actually their striving so much for backwards compatibility that there’s at least 6 ways to edit things or data and they’re all still officially supported. It’s a bit bloaty and no Devs have any consensus.
Does someone remembers the PowerToys collection?
The newer version is installed on my Windows 11 and is under active development.
Does someone remembers the PowerToys collection?
That name rings a bell. My username is from “Tweak Tools 95”, which I think was a part of that or something.
Edit: Also Windows has a long history of alternating good and bad versions.
- 98 - good
- ME - bad
- XP - good
- Vista - bad
- 7 - good
- 8 - bad
- 10 - good
- 11 - bad
In theory, the next version of Windows should be fairly good, or at least an improvement on 11. However I worry that MS will buck the trend now - particularly as they’ve pivoted away from software sales to software as a service (with additional data collection because fuck paying users).
Unpopular opinion: Win 11 works well for me, and is visually better than Win 10. Although it’s a fairly recent PC. Although if they keep pushing more telemetry and ads, I’m moving over to Ubuntu.
Why does everyone keep forgetting 2000 and 8.1?
2000 was mostly NT and business stuff (which later became XP), and 8.1 by definition isn’t really a new version.
Actually, 8.1 is, or at least they market it like a new version just like Windows 7.
I would have never thought so many people would be pissed about Wordpad. Fucking Wordpad! It’s terrible! And Ms isn’t killing it to get office subscriptions because no one fucking uses it! They’re killing it because it isn’t worth the effort to maintain. There are so many free alternatives that are better.
I’m guessing you’re pretty young, then.
I can count on one hand the amount of MS products I’ve vaguely enjoyed using. Most things seems to be designed with the attitude that people will be using this whether they like it or not, making the user experience fucking awful. Nothing wrong with shitting on them.
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.
Notepad++ was a good alternative when I was running Windows
That’s an alternative to Notepad, not for Wordpad that has basic word processing formatting.
Wow someone was using this?
You can likely still grab the exe and use it
I recently started using a markdown based note taking program called Joplin, that might be useful for you
Check out Obsidian ;)
I love obsidian too!
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.
Probably don’t use Atom though seeing as it was sunset at the end of 2022
Notepad is absolutely a fantastic tool for stripping any formatting from text and loading a file exactly how you expect it. Like vim only without the easy to use shortcuts.
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.
Notepad++ can’t handle as big files for some reason. At work we have files that can reach 5-600 MB, and NP++ can’t always open those, but notepad handles then with no problem.
I’ve opened 4GB files with notepad++ before. Sure, it takes several minutes (I basically have to go away and do something else, or leave it loading in the background) but it gets there, eventually.
NP++ straight up tells us it’s too big to be opened…
Just upload it in the cloud and use Microsoft online word!
\s
Tbf npp has much more functionality than regular notepad.
Just the syntax highlighting alone probably dramatically lowers the amount of text it can render.
With bigger files or searching in files where there’s a lot of data I found sublimetext to be much more efficient (than n++)
There’s a npp plugin called Big Files, I haven’t used it but it might be worth a look.
ref. https://github.com/superolmo/BigFiles
also
https://github.com/molsonkiko/HugeFiles
also interesting on this topic
https://www.howtogeek.com/869782/notepad-can-handle-your-huge-text-files-again/
Can’t use plugins unfortunately…
That sounds backwards… I occasionally have to open log files of 1 gig or more, and notepad++ gets sluggish, but is usable, while notepad just hangs until I kill it…
Someone suggested that we might have the 32-bit version, and that that might be the problem. I have no way of checking for a few months though, since I’m on parental leave until January. Because our NP++ just says that the files are too big to be opened. Sidenote: Sometimes it can open files that are a bit bigger, and sometimes only a bit smaller… So it’s not a hard limit that is the same at all times.
Use Vim.
“Active development”? What the fuck do they think needed to be done with txt? More ads? They do realize that there are a lot of txt looker aters right? This is not even a fight, its a “well anyway” sort of thing.
Wordpad is for looking at and editing rich text, not txt files. It’s not a big deal because no one uses rtf.
Wordpad is for whatever people use it for, and that is mostly looking at files in some sort of text (words on a pad). My point is if microsoft removes the ability to open a text file then the consequences are on them.
Wordpad can also open most Word files. Even though I have Office, I open word files in wordpad all the time, because it’s so much faster to open. When I just need one small piece of info, that I am going to copy and paste, it saves me time.
I like using it when I want to create a simple rtf document and not use a bloated Office.
as a replacement, markdown is your friend. you can learn the symbols or (harder option) find a markdown wyswyg editor program.
Or, and hear me out on this, you create an unholy mixture of MD/HTML/Latex documents in a plaintext editor and then you use the Pandoc CLI to make it into a PDF/DOCX/website/whatever.
Word is not included with Windows apprently so Wordpad is useful at work when I don’t have time to install LibreOffice.
probably takes a bit of effort to keep windows built-in spell checker from working in it.
Spell checker works in literally every part of windows (more so where you don’t want it), this is the lamest weak sauce example on why you need to give me $20 ever.
So long as they don’t fuck with Notepad, I could give a fuck. Notwithstanding Notepad++ is a thing, so the fuck to be given would be inordinately small.
Yeah where else would I open a ton of ascii art, followed by “Install, then copy crack to install folder” 😂
I get that people here hate MS, but defending Wordpad is a bonkers hill to die on.
It’s complete wank.
It’s the free (as in beer) program that comes with windows to open doc and rtf files and put together fine enough documents. Dropping it is Microsoft telling users unwilling to pay for word without the technical knowhow to get LibreOffice or Abiword going to get fucked. Its anti consumer no matter which way you slice it.
It’s have to actually launch it to be sure, but I’m pretty sure you can open them in Edge these days, along with all the other office documents.
As for creating documents, your average social media comment editor has more features than Wordpad. Given that Chrome is still the most popular browser on Windows by some way, I think the average Windows user can download programs just fine. OpenOffice is even on the MS Store for those stuck on Windows S edition.
My basic text editor on Winows somehow broke and crashes with a wired memory error so I WordPad is my basic text editor
Why not libre Office ?
Notepad++ gang
Or download notepad.exe lmao fucc
Takes a bit to long to start for such simple things like just fixing copy paste formation or testing different keyboards etc.
RIP WordPad coders.
Not to worry my dear Wordpad coders: Neovim is a good alternative. One can always set wrap and the default font to Times New Roman.
Time to switch to a real pro IDE, which is Word obviously.
oh no, anyway
