After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad
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This is misinformation. They added the login requirement for their Generative AI and the actual notepad doesn't require a login. But I guess we're ragebaiting today.
I turned off that AI stuff as soon as I saw it. Click the gear icon in Notepad in the upper right to open settings and turn it off.
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It should be noted that you can still use Notepad without a Microsoft account
Despite the ability to still use the software without an account
Are we not doing context anymore?
What is this? Just outrage for the sake of outrage?
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So, let me ask you a question: How long do you think Microsoft will wait before they start charging for essential services? Would you be willing to pay for something like Notepad? Or, for example, pay to connect to the internet through their wireless interface? This seems like just the beginning, with more features eventually locked behind paywalls. They're testing the waters to see how much they can charge. Think about it—Microsoft gave you the house, but now they want to charge you for the doors. Meanwhile, Google is watching, waiting to see what they can charge for. And like you said, Mac will surely follow suit. I was simply listing operating systems across different ecosystems, because Windows hasn’t successfully broken out of the Personal Computer space.
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MacOS
And you get the privilege of making that one-time $2000 purchase every 2-3 years when Apple eventually nerfs their hardware with bad firmware updates
Examples? Not at all my experience. I love my Linux boxes but every MacBook I’ve owned has lasted 10 years and generally is quick until near the end of that period. My iPhone shave also all lasted longer than my Android phones with considerably more updates and security patches (supposedly this will be more on par now if Google doesn’t cancel yet another program).
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Apple heavily pushes their users towards iCloud subscriptions. More so on iOS than macOS but still.
Easy to avoid on Macs. Harder on phones for non-technical types. The bigger issue with Apple is I think getting data out of iCloud should you want to do something else. Their proprietary formats and databases (especially for photos) is kind of a nightmare.
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Have you ever built PCs? Macs are significantly more expensive for the same spec
Not really if you actually try to match the screen too. Good colour accuracy is expensive. It’s the best part of their products. If someone doesn’t need that then yeah, definitely better options.
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Sounds like everyone is going to have to upgrade to Notepad ++ but honestly why are people even using Windows anymore and who even uses Notepad. I wanna see those numbers, like what... 5000 active users of notepad and they are just grandparents whose grandkids couldn't be bothered to install anything else. Seriously though Android, Mac OS, Steam OS, Android TV, Chrome OS, Debian, hell Ubuntu, Linux Mint so why are people making excuses to use Windows other than because it's on a work computer. Microsoft is lost in the sauce like hey guys let's make the operating system free and people pay for Notepad. You know what that sounds like, a car manufacturer giving away cars and charging to use the radio radio. When Windows became free the quality became identical to the price.
Do you game? Cuz that alone is a solid reason to use windows. I know Linux is getting usable for it, but let's be honest there is no more convenient OS when it comes to gaming and daily use than windows and you can't tell me otherwise. I have tried to switch to Ubuntu or mint many times but it's just not idiot proof enough for ur average how yet and I constantly found myself trying to troubleshoot issues I never ran into with windows. Yea I know Microsoft is the devil and all that, but they still provide the easiest to use OS out there!
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Oh god, how will replace a completely basic word processor? Surely there are not numerous replacements?
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It should be noted that you can still use Notepad without a Microsoft account
Despite the ability to still use the software without an account
Are we not doing context anymore?
What is this? Just outrage for the sake of outrage?
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's hard for me to contain my incredulity: have you been asleep for the last decade? Has a very obvious pattern of enshitification has not been constantly proven as a rule on the tech sector? And an article is... outrage?
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Do you game? Cuz that alone is a solid reason to use windows. I know Linux is getting usable for it, but let's be honest there is no more convenient OS when it comes to gaming and daily use than windows and you can't tell me otherwise. I have tried to switch to Ubuntu or mint many times but it's just not idiot proof enough for ur average how yet and I constantly found myself trying to troubleshoot issues I never ran into with windows. Yea I know Microsoft is the devil and all that, but they still provide the easiest to use OS out there!
I game a ton and the only missing games these days are malware. I simply don't play those games.
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Examples? Not at all my experience. I love my Linux boxes but every MacBook I’ve owned has lasted 10 years and generally is quick until near the end of that period. My iPhone shave also all lasted longer than my Android phones with considerably more updates and security patches (supposedly this will be more on par now if Google doesn’t cancel yet another program).
This is the most famous example, but it's for phones rather than desktops.
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"make all the dates in this CSV iso-8601"
This is a use of AI/LLM processing that I could agree with, if it could be trusted. Since it cannot, better to open in vim and regex replace, or process with Python.
That said, I'd rather store as epoch and display as ISO-8601 as the arithmetic is much less prone to error in epoch than any other format.
Yeah look I'm not an AI advocate at all. If I were confronted with this my first instinct would be to manipulate it in a spreadsheet because they can juggle data types like this pretty effortlessly.
The CSV / dates thing was just an example, but I still think it's a good one. My assistant at work would 100% use notepad like this rather than using a spreadsheet.
It's also worth pointing out that notepad + LLM would be a lot more flexible than a spreadsheet. Just paste whatever there and explain what you want in plain english. You don't need to parse your request into regex or spreadsheet formulas. For you and I, we might have spent years interacting with regex and other things such that it's a pleasant challenge when it arises. For 20 year old me it would have been a tedious impediment to whatever I was trying to achieve.
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It should be noted that you can still use Notepad without a Microsoft account
Despite the ability to still use the software without an account
Are we not doing context anymore?
What is this? Just outrage for the sake of outrage?
Exactly. The issue is that it's a freemium model, where they advertise a product with additional features in Notepad. But Notepad itself is still free.
That's still bad, but so is the title.
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So, let me ask you a question: How long do you think Microsoft will wait before they start charging for essential services? Would you be willing to pay for something like Notepad? Or, for example, pay to connect to the internet through their wireless interface? This seems like just the beginning, with more features eventually locked behind paywalls. They're testing the waters to see how much they can charge. Think about it—Microsoft gave you the house, but now they want to charge you for the doors. Meanwhile, Google is watching, waiting to see what they can charge for. And like you said, Mac will surely follow suit. I was simply listing operating systems across different ecosystems, because Windows hasn’t successfully broken out of the Personal Computer space.
I'm not even willing to use Windows for free. I have it installed w/o a license, and I haven't booted into it in... 2 years? 3? I honestly don't remember, but I haven't used Windows in any meaningful sense for >10 years, other than to test Windows-specific things.
Reject this nonsense. There are alternatives that could probably work for you, depending on your requirements.
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The click bait will never die my friend.
We should never tire of pointing it out though.
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Do you game? Cuz that alone is a solid reason to use windows. I know Linux is getting usable for it, but let's be honest there is no more convenient OS when it comes to gaming and daily use than windows and you can't tell me otherwise. I have tried to switch to Ubuntu or mint many times but it's just not idiot proof enough for ur average how yet and I constantly found myself trying to troubleshoot issues I never ran into with windows. Yea I know Microsoft is the devil and all that, but they still provide the easiest to use OS out there!
Yes, if your only or at least primary reason for using your PC is to play games, you'll have an easier time on Windows. That's an undeniable fact.
However, that doesn't mean you need Windows to play games. There is a huge amount of games that work on Linux, and outside of competitive MP games w/ invasive anti-cheat, VR, and maybe a couple other niches, pretty much everything works on Linux, though some games will need a few tweaks (ProtonDB for details).
The more people that switch to Linux, the more attractive the platform is for game devs, meaning the more likely we'll get official support for more games. Look at what has happened since the Steam Deck's launch, we've gone from devs completely ignoring Linux to some games spending actual resources to support it. That's phenomenal!
If you want an alternative to Windows without all the crap Microsoft is shoving into it, Linux is your best bet. Consider trying it out, you may be pleasantly surprised.
That said, if you're uninterested, that's totally cool too.
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I have always been partial to gedit, kate aint bad either.
(neo)vim for life
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After taking a look at the pictures of the article, I noticed “requires AI credits”. Credits?! What is this now? Some shitty mobile game? Really, Microsoft isn’t ashamed of anything anymore…
I mean, I don’t know about Microsoft and windows, so maybe this is different, but the name sounds crazy!
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imo macOS is better value than Windows. A Windows PC of similar quality to what Apple offers (built quality and specs) is not that much cheaper and with a Mac you get a ton of actually usable software included.
Obviously FOSS still wins offering a ton of good software for free, lots of choice and the option to choose from hardware at any price point. But Windows is just bad unless you're an enterprise user or gamer (and the latter is changing fast in Linux favour).
A Windows PC of similar quality to what Apple offers (built quality and specs) is not that much cheaper
I don't think that's true, at least if we're talking about hardware. The only thing that I think really makes this argument is the screen, because you need to go really high end to get the same quality screen (if it exists).
If we mostly stick to CPU, RAM, storage, etc, then you can get a really competitive PC for about half the cost. I bought a decent ThinkPad new about 7 years ago for $500 (E series), which was pretty competitive w/ the Macbook Pro in terms of specs, and I still use it to this day. I didn't go top-of-the-line, so the CPU was a little worse and it had integrated graphics, but I could absolutely find a similar build to the MBP for $1k or so, probably less. The MacBook Air and Mac Mini, however, is a lot harder to find a competitor for and I think their value is quite strong with that form factor.
If we include software, then yeah, macOS offers a ton of value, since you get a decent office suite and a bunch of other utilities included with it, whereas w/ Windows, you just get trial versions of subscription software. So valuing the included SW in macOS vs Windows really depends on the individual.
Windows is just bad
Agreed. I only buy "Windows" laptops to install Linux on, and on my last laptop, I got a $40 discount because I told the sales rep I wasn't interested in Windows and they gave that to me.
That said, the value that Windows provides that other OSes don't is compatibility. macOS can't play Windows games, and Linux can't play some games that work on Windows. If you need that compatibility, the value assessment is a lot different than if you could switch platforms without giving anything up.
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We should never tire of pointing it out though.
We must fight!
