[HN Gopher] Microsoft paywalling features in Notepad and Paint
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Microsoft paywalling features in Notepad and Paint
Author : billybuckwheat
Score : 46 points
Date : 2025-03-16 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcworld.com)
| duxup wrote:
| Long ago I loved Windows, it wasn't pretty, but it was
| utilitarian and it worked and I could strip it down to what I
| needed and I was good to go.
|
| I still fondly remember the old windows 95 start me up
| commercials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRdl1BjTG7c,
| wonderful time.
|
| Then they started introducing all sorts of incomplete UI and UX,
| then the updates kept undoing my explicit settings, now Windows
| just seems like an ad-supported Operating System ...
|
| I ran to Apple and haven't looked back. All I see are reasons to
| stay away if at all possible.
| brulard wrote:
| Me coming from Amiga, I didn't love Windows (starting around
| 95-98 versions). It should have been more modern and quick, but
| in many aspects it wasn't. I learned to tolerate it, and I
| became good at working with it. After years I tried hackintosh
| (OsX Lion, 2011), and I was amazed at the difference. Even
| hackintosh was completely stable (unlike windows) on my
| hardware and I loved all the features and polished things. I
| still kept a windows machine or two somewhere around to deal
| with work, etc. and from what I've seen, it went downhill so
| much since the XP era. Although I think even macos goes
| downhill, but it's night and day difference to Windows. YMMV of
| course.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > the old windows 95 start me up commercials
|
| Yes, so do I. I worked as editor for a computer magazine and as
| such was invited to the launch event and was flabbergasted by
| them selecting a song which' next line was "you make a grown
| men cry". It sure did, in many ways but not as they intended.
|
| Maybe I should add that I was and am more of a Linux person?
| Windows 95 was a house of cards built on quicksand, it out-
| guru-meditationed the Amiga, it was OS/1.13 to OS/2 2.x but boy
| did it sell well.
|
| I also remember a sales droid showing me the "security" offered
| by the policy manager, "look you can restrict which programs
| your users can run". Sure, I thought, let's see how deep that
| goes and opened a document in Windows Write, added an embedded
| (OLE) document for the program he just removed from the user's
| start menu through the policy manager and double-clicked the
| resulting icon in the Write document. The "forbidden" program
| started, the sales droid looked surprised, the hypothesis was
| proven.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| My feeling is that they're paywalling features that are arguably
| better left out of these tools anyway.
|
| When I'm reaching for Notepad, I want something that is very
| minimal with very low "interpretive" functionality. If I'm on
| Windows, I want to expect that it is there if I'm working in an
| unfamiliar environment and I don't want to hide the raw text as
| much as possible. Same with Paint. In both cases, if I want more,
| I'll reach for a more capable tool which excels at having the
| advanced features I'm looking for.
| duxup wrote:
| It does seem like they should have left these bits out rather
| than take a known product and turn it into Spirit Airlines of
| an app. Even if it is an actual bonus feature, nobody likes
| this kinda vibe.
| actuallyalys wrote:
| It's a pretty strange choice by Microsoft, which historically
| hasn't been afraid to have multiple products that are similar
| to one another, often to the point of confusion.
| cwbrandsma wrote:
| Doesn't look like they are paywalling existing feature, just some
| new AI back functionality. Considering how much is costs to run
| those sorts of features I can understand.
|
| Plus, there are lots of alternative app that are free and easy to
| download and install.
| chrismcb wrote:
| So people still use notepad and paint? One of the first things I
| do with a fresh install is install notepad++ and paint.net.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| The pay-walled features: AI
|
| But let's not let facts ruin a good Windows 11 outrage story.
| pacifika wrote:
| I don't think they will keep it at that though.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The news is that they're pushing more code onto your machines
| that has hooks back to Microsoft's data centers. It doesn't
| matter how much they pinky promise that they won't use this
| without your consent, they're not trustworthy or competent
| enough for any such promise to be believable. It's better if
| the code simply isn't there at all.
| jjulius wrote:
| Why in the hell does Notepad need AI? I can't roll my eyes any
| harder than I am at this idea. Jesus.
|
| Edit: I challenge those who downvote this to steelman the
| inclusion of AI in what is ostensibly supposed to be a very
| barebones, simplistic, no frills notepad.
| slowtrek wrote:
| I'd say it's similar to spellcheck. We don't spell very well
| anymore, and soon we won't get any better at writing.
| ohgr wrote:
| Word taught me how to spell back in the 90s.
| bastard_op wrote:
| I had to look, thinking "What, I can't save a file anymore
| without a subscription?" Sounds like a microsoft thing to do.
|
| But no, it was just goddamn access to AI. In notepad. Oh, that's
| a thing, and one I should pay for?
|
| /me goes back to using Linux chuckling at the poor bastards that
| use windoze only every day
| canucker2016 wrote:
| At least there'll be no confusion about Microsoft suddenly
| changing the default option to "enable" at a later date and
| suddenly all your Notepad/paint data is getting processed by an
| Azure box somewhere.
|
| Unless Microsoft decides to make those features free and enable
| them for all to increase adoption...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I had the same reaction to the article. I'm not so quick to
| laugh at the poor bastards though. Even if we are unshackled
| ourselves, we still have to live in a society that largely is--
| and there are costs to that.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Jeez, it makes me want to buy windows start bar ads for Notepad++
| and Paint.net just to raise awareness that there's free options a
| bazillion times better.
| userbinator wrote:
| "Features" that a large number of users would gladly not pay for
| anyway. MS has really burned a lot of the reputation and trust
| they've built in the early days.
|
| The new Win11 notepad is repulsively modern, a good example of
| how far software has fallen. I don't want tabs, more whitespace,
| nor more sluggishness or AI "enhancements" in a simple text
| editor.
| RossBencina wrote:
| During the first era where notepad.exe really sucked (non-
| standard key commands and such) I switched to the very
| lightweight notepad replacement metapad.exe by Alexander Davidson
| and never looked back.
|
| That said, after over 25 years primarily on Windows, I am
| planning my exit to Linux. Windows has diverged from my
| expectations.
| tombert wrote:
| I think Linux, at least if you have an AMD graphics card, has
| gotten a lot better as a desktop OS in the last decade or so.
|
| For a long time you'd have issues with graphics drivers and
| wifi drivers and X crashing and PulseAudio just deciding to not
| work, but nowadays that really hasn't been an issue for me. AMD
| drivers are built into the kernel, Wayland is generally stable,
| Pipewire with Pulse works ok, and most Wifi seems to work out
| of the box for me. Hell, I have a network card in a desktop
| computer from the infamous Broadcom, and even that worked out
| of the box in Linux now.
|
| I'm sure it's more difficult if you're a FOSS purist, but I'm
| not. I allow the unfree stuff in NixOS, and things have
| generally been pretty good, at least in my current laptop
| (ThinkPad P16s Gen 2 AMD).
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| I remember using MS Paint and a USB flash drive to bypass the
| Best Buy system deployed on PCs back in the early 2000s. Paint
| still has some great functionality as a complement to PowerPoint
| and Word in an office workflow.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Microsoft's LLM obsession is getting out of hand. I use Firefox
| for 95% of my browsing but load up Edge for anything finance
| related. When I opened it today, I was greeted with a full page
| of information about all the new AI features they had crammed in
| to watch everything I do in the browser. I found the settings
| that say they turn this off but some of it was rather ambiguous.
| Given how often the screw up OS updates these days, I don't trust
| them to keep private whatever data they're scaping from Edge. The
| company seems to be converging from many directions on a massive
| data breach that will put to shame any other past data breaches.
| trallnag wrote:
| Leadership wants more AI. And every product team at Microsoft
| scrambles to find applications for it
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Pro tip: find and copy mspaint and notepad from a previous Win OS
| version. Also the old calculator ;)
|
| I am not saying that I have done so, but let's say that I keep
| copies of some older .exe files 'because'. Now that I read this I
| laughed a bit because those will come in handy.
|
| Also I always suggest that you find WindowsFirewallControl
| v4.9.x.x and install it, and set it on "Medium Filtering" and
| "Display Notifications". They block all the garbage MS bloatware
| apps that want to 'speak to the internet' and trust me when I
| tell you, 99% of the apps in your PC don't need to have 24/7/365
| access. You want to update your VLC? Good! Allow it for 5mins,
| update, block it again. Same for the myriad other Microsoft .exe
| files that do not serve OUR purpose.
| simondanerd wrote:
| I've kept every version of Windows and major releases of
| popular Linux distros, but didn't know exactly what to do with
| them other than test certain things when I'm teaching someone
| an ecosystem.
|
| Add binary storage and versioning to the list of reasons I keep
| my NAS going.
| kmoser wrote:
| They can have my MS Word and Excel 2010 install binaries when
| they pry them from my cold, dead hard drive. I've been using
| them for 15 years and so far have no need to pay a penny more
| for what is essentially the same thing, only with more bloat
| and less control.
| uladzislau wrote:
| This should be in "not the onion".
| _-_-__-_-_- wrote:
| Just today, I finished migrating all my local services from my
| Windows desktop to a new machine running Ubuntu 24.10. I can now
| shut down the entire Windows machine and boot it up without
| Internet access as needed. Seems like as good a time as any to
| run Linux on the desktop.
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(page generated 2025-03-16 23:00 UTC)