After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad
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The title is quite sensational compared to the content. They only added an AI Rewrite feature for notepad that requires a Microsoft 365 subscription. Considering the cost of AI, and the fact that it will very probably run in the cloud, it is very reasonable that it isn't free. Everything else about notepad remains free / included with the price you paid for the OS.
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the news is more that they are trying to shoehorn AI in effing Notepad to make sure even those little snippets of text can be used for training
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So notepad isn't behind a paywall, AI features nobody was asking for is behind a paywall, and this headline is bullshit.
That's my takeaway.
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Fuck Ai. I just want Notepad to edit the most basic text. Why the fuck would I need fucking Ai bullshit in it? To rewrite what? INI game files? Hosts file?
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It’s for the “AI” no one was asking for in the first place
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Notepad is not free! Bah ha ha ha. Anyway, tons of options out there for those not to lazy to look.
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Is it though? I still always open notepad for random text stuff. What is better in ++?
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That's my understanding, yes
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I agree, but the idea of adding AI to notepad is quite insane in its own right
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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"
