After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad
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[obligatory linux boast]
I really prefer Kate to Notepad because KDE makes superior, non AI encrusted software that actually works for it's users. And it's FREE! -
Notepad++ isn't trying to shoehorn in AI for starters. It's clear Microsoft is praying the current gimmicky narrative of AI will let the masses not realize this is a privacy nightmare.
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Yes, it objectively is. And so are various other text editor options that are out there.
But just speaking about Notepad++, you can scale it down to a very simple text editor (like Notepad), it you can easily ramp it up to a much more feature rich one. And for me, the ability to have a vertical list of files is a big plus. As is its ability to optionally show line numbers.
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Notepad does that neither for me and has not for >20 years. So is there something that is actually better or not?
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- Keeps your progress if you exit without saving
- Supports tabs so you don't have 5 separate notepad windows open
- syntax highlighting for programming languages and markdown format
- plugin support
- can handle extremely large text files (I've opened 50gb text files and used ctrl+f to find terms and it worked fine)
- superb tools for manipulating text (e.g., use reg expressions). Super easy to make mass edits.
- dark mode support. That alone makes it superior lol
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So it is better because it can do more, but I assume not too too much? Because then we can also use word?
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A lot of those are features of notepad.
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It's a lot more feature filled and frankly not very nice looking if all you want is a simple replacement for Notepad. Notepads (with an s) is much better imo.
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Ah thanks for the first proper answer. Sounds good, I will give it a try.
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I think the idea is that you can use it for reformatting small sets of data I guess.
"make all the dates in this CSV iso-8601"
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I love Kate.
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I use Vim, actually
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Adding layers to paint was what surprised me
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A few of those features are available on Notepad as well, just FYI.
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Specifically: tabs, dark mode, and retention of unsaved documents. They're apps for very different purposes, but Notepad has had some nice little updates over recent years.
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[email protected] could use more folks!
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There always has to be one...
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So... who wants to bet that the new version of Notepad is not constantly scraping anything you type into it and feeding it into the AI, regardless of whether you're paying for this feature or not?
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Is that Windows 11-only thing, or have I been missing a bunch of notepad features?
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You obviously didn't read the article, but that's OK it's a trash article anyway. Which is already indicated by the headline, since Notepad was never free, it's just included with Windows.
But your comment is disconnected from what this is really about, which essentially boils down to nothing.
Since what you are supposed to pay for is new AI features. Otherwise you can use Notepad as usual.
