After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad
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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!
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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.
Crys in simulator gamer.
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Microsoft what the fuck are you doing.
You fucking idiot's.
Exactly. Instead of doubling down on trying to extract profit from everything, they should go back to their old motto of "it's the operating system, stupid" or "developers developers developers..."
Microsoft should be trying to make their OS more attractive by providing more value, and then pushing for developers to release through their Microsoft Store so they get some profit after sale. Basically the iPhone strategy of making a solid base product, and charging for every additional app that gets installed.
But no, they're making the default experience suck more, which makes alternatives a lot more attractive. That's... not how you maintain market share.
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Crys in simulator gamer.
It's okay buddy. One of these days you'll get to eat your cake and have it too.
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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.
Yeah. Like, I get AI can be useful, but it’s fucking everywhere! Even a god damn fridge got AI! And I hate it to be so forced on me, like, I just wanna write text or code without Copilot annoying me all of the time.
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I game a ton and the only missing games these days are malware. I simply don't play those games.
Considering most mmos don't support Linux, as well as some games anticheat breaking seemingly randomly on updates, on top of the better performance for Nvidia gpus on windows is enough reason for a lot of people who game to stay with windows
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The year of the Linux desktop has arrived.
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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!
Yeah, but have you seen the performance difference between Windows and Linux machines? SteamOS is absolutely crushing it when it comes to improving Linux, making it much more user-friendly. They’re even opening it up to other platforms, which is a huge win for everyone.
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Considering most mmos don't support Linux, as well as some games anticheat breaking seemingly randomly on updates, on top of the better performance for Nvidia gpus on windows is enough reason for a lot of people who game to stay with windows
Considering most mmos don’t support Linux
Only the ones that ship malware don't work on linux.
as well as some games anticheat breaking seemingly randomly on updates
Yes, malware, kernel level anticheat is malware.
on top of the better performance for Nvidia gpus
This is almost completely resolved.
I understand people want their malware, but we should call it what it is.
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Considering most mmos don’t support Linux
Only the ones that ship malware don't work on linux.
as well as some games anticheat breaking seemingly randomly on updates
Yes, malware, kernel level anticheat is malware.
on top of the better performance for Nvidia gpus
This is almost completely resolved.
I understand people want their malware, but we should call it what it is.
Not denying kernal level anticheat is essentially malware but for games that require it you have no choice, even running them on virtual machines doesn't work in some instances. The nvidia performance has improved but is still a decent difference depending on the games.
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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.
Oh, one of the first things I did was group policy edit anything to do with tracking, ads, or AI.
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see I said UNIX was still being used at that time OVER *BSD.
You seem to think Unix is one system. You also seem to think *BSDs are not a branch of Unix.
You don't seem to learn.
How old are you and what's your intention in behaving this way? Just interested.
How the fuck do you think I think Unix is one system? What the living fuck is wrong with you, child? I have been around since AT&T UNIX was a fucking thing, you baby. Infant. Child. Poor little fucking hateful, spiteful, baby who can't stand using something that is popular and has to cling to something that he thinks earns him some sort of fake nerd cred. Grow the goddamn up.
When you speak of something in general terms, like "UNIX", you're not implying it's one thing. This is how language works. Which you would have learned if you actually got to high school and passed your fucking English classes.
You're just a troll and not worth anyone's time, and you're trying to make me into a troll when all I'm doing is telling you the actual history and truth behind operating systems.
Here's what you do: you re-read everything I've said, and you don't reply. You take some fucking time to think things over and analyze your life and your pathetic infatuations with things that aren't "popular" because you feel inferior attaching yourself to something everyone else is doing. Several days.
Then you come back and you apologize. I will be happy to accept it.
Otherwise, just shut the fuck up if you're not willing to do that. I don't want to hear it.
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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.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. The general inaccuracy/untrustworthiness of LLMs makes me very uncomfortable in their use for data processing and transformations. I'd rather take a while to get it right than to potentially hand off a CSV with glaring problems due to use of an LLM.
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How the fuck do you think I think Unix is one system? What the living fuck is wrong with you, child? I have been around since AT&T UNIX was a fucking thing, you baby. Infant. Child. Poor little fucking hateful, spiteful, baby who can't stand using something that is popular and has to cling to something that he thinks earns him some sort of fake nerd cred. Grow the goddamn up.
When you speak of something in general terms, like "UNIX", you're not implying it's one thing. This is how language works. Which you would have learned if you actually got to high school and passed your fucking English classes.
You're just a troll and not worth anyone's time, and you're trying to make me into a troll when all I'm doing is telling you the actual history and truth behind operating systems.
Here's what you do: you re-read everything I've said, and you don't reply. You take some fucking time to think things over and analyze your life and your pathetic infatuations with things that aren't "popular" because you feel inferior attaching yourself to something everyone else is doing. Several days.
Then you come back and you apologize. I will be happy to accept it.
Otherwise, just shut the fuck up if you're not willing to do that. I don't want to hear it.
Plenty of Afghan goat farmers have been around since ATnT Unix was a thing, this doesn't mean they know anything about Unix.
You've made a lot of factual errors showing that you don't know what you're talking about, you also haven't specified even once which specific period hides under "that time" in your claims.
You've claimed that Minix ever was a popular system, you've claimed that "BSD" is some alternative to Unix separate from it while it's simply Berkeley Unix that dropped the Unix trademark due to litigation.
Solaris, HP/UX, Irix are Unix System V, which was sort of a merger of ATnT Unix and BSD.
So BSDs are literally just Unix (Unix of Theseus so to say, code from BSD that moved to commercial Unix remained there, but code from ATnT remaining in BSD had to be rewritten after the lawsuits, I've read it wasn't much).
Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems is also one of the main people behind BSD.
Also throwing insults doesn't make you more persuasive, when you are not even close to knowing the subject. I'm trying to help you, but I don't want to spend more effort.
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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.
Yeah, but if you look at the whole picture and not just specs, the hardware isn't priced that badly. Like you said, a similar screen would only be found on high end devices and I would argue you can't even get a trackpad that is as good as the one on a MacBook from any other manufacturer. You also get a pretty decent webcam and speakers and the aluminium chassis is exceptionally good too. If you don't care about those things then I understand looking mainly at specs, but if you do these things add up to a really good user experience.
Don't get me wrong though. I don't want to shill for Apple here. There are some things that are just obscenely expensive. The cost of RAM
and storage upgrades is an insult. Or the Mac Pro wheels or basically anything "small" (adapters, the Apple cloth etc.).
