RIP Microsoft WordPad. You Will Be Missed
RIP Microsoft WordPad. You Will Be Missed
It's truly the end of an era as we say farewell to a real one.
RIP Microsoft WordPad. You Will Be Missed::It's truly the end of an era as we say farewell to a real one.
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WordPad is what MS Word should be. It's most of what everyone needs in a word processor and it's lightweight. MS Word is becoming a bloated nightmare of toolbars and creeping featuritis.
Is becoming? It already has been for decades. I think the extent of adding an entire VBA automation backend was somewhere near the tipping point...
Fortunately LibreOffice is a thing for anyone who wants a $0 rich text capable editor, and I'm sure there are a zillion other alternatives by now both open source and not.
Yeah, "becoming" is a strange choice of wording.... Word has been bloated and overkill for 2 decades at this point.
Libre Office is still bulky for anything I want on my PC. If I'm going to do any serious writing, I'm using Google Docs for backups and such. If I'm doing quick txt edits I'm using Sublime or Notepad. I use wordpad for stuff in the middle so I will definitely miss it and not sure how to solve this problem.
That said, I'm not fucking installing Win 11 so guess this isn't a problem till 12.
Why would you install windows 12?
Right? Even setting aside the inevitable "have you considered Linux?" chat, if you're the kind of person who refuses to install Windows 11, why would you be sure you'll install Windows 12?
We've seen nothing to suggest Windows won't just continue to get less usable, more bloated, more spyware-ridden, and just generally more anti-consumer.
Up to XP I used several dos versions, win3.1, 95, 98, 98SE, and then XP. From there I skipped one version, so 7, then 10. Worked out pretty well so far. So my next windows will hopefully also be 12, and I hope it will have a better UI than 11.
Linux is also interesting, but I like gaming without fiddling too much with my operating system, I just don't want to commit my rare spare time to that. I want install -> play.
Linux is also interesting, but I like gaming without fiddling too much with my operating system, I just don't want to commit my rare spare time to that. I want install -> play.
With Proton, running Windows games from Steam has become pretty much click-and-play. If you do all your gaming through Steam, most games just work.
Sadly I do non of my gaming through steam. But someone else might find this answer useful!
why would you be sure you'll install Windows 12?
I'm not, my post said this isn't an issue till 12, as in, I'm not even considering 11, but I will consider 12.
That said, you can't stay on 10 forever without losing modern software support and modern drivers and security updates after EOL... So you basically HAVE to move at some point. My point was just in not touching 11. But it's unlikely that you'll be able to keep a Win 10 device running till 13 so... It's either 11 or 12 and with the way Microsofts cycles go, 12 likely will be better than 11.
If not... Well... Maybe Linux and proton will have caught up and Nvidia will actually make drivers etc etc. But not worth worrying about that yet.
For the same reason I'm not still running 7...because you can't actually stay on one version forever. I'm going to put the whole Linux thing aside because... Yeah, that's a topic of its own and I think anyone with half a mind knows the reasons why Linux isn't everyone's first choice.
But at some point Win 10 will reach EOL and will stop receiving updates. It'll stop receiving new versions of DirectX etc. People will stop making drivers for it. Software will start requiring things in newer versions of Windows, etc. The list goes on, but inevitably you have to update.
Luckily with Windows, you can usually skip one full release, but you can't really make it past 2. Hence why I said 12. Am I crazy about the way 12 is shaping out? No. But you'd be crazy to think that you can just remain on 10 forever so I'm being realistic.
Also, Windows is well known to have a shitty even/odd cycle where every other release sucks and the alternating ones are less bad. So hopefully 12 will be the same. For example, 95 was really good, 98 was meh, XP was fantastic, ME/2000 are kind of a joke, Vista sucked, 7 was good enough, 8 was miserable, 10 was okay, 11 is awful... So if the pattern continues, 12 should be better than 11 at least.
I didn't think this actually needed an answer but... Maybe I'm getting old and am too used to Microsofts cycles. Also, my point was "this isn't a problem till 12" meaning, I'm not touching 11 so it doesn't even matter till I start considering 12. Never said I was definitively doing it.
2000
yeah someone never used nt4 would think that. gha.
Windows 2000 pro and server 2000 were enormous steps up in QOL and functionality.
I did in fact use them. Most consumers didnt. Not really worth going to the in and out intricacies when the majority of people brushed past 2000 and never touched pro or had a need for server.
anyone who used NT4 and thought 2000pro was a bad drop is bonkers.
Also, I'm dubious of your experience because 2000 pro WAS window 2000. There was no 'non pro' - if you used windows 2000, every day you either saw it boot up saying windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2000 Advanced Server.
So you're either misremembering, or kinda full of shit. Confusing it for Windows ME perhaps?
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and designed for businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officially released to retail on February 17, 2000 and September 26, 2000 for Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. It was Microsoft's business operating system until the introduction of Windows XP Professional in 2001. Windows 2000 introduced NTFS 3.0, Encrypting File System, as well as basic and dynamic disk storage. Support for people with disabilities was improved over Windows NT 4.0 with a number of new assistive technologies, and Microsoft increased support for different languages and locale information. The Windows 2000 Server family has additional features, most notably the introduction of Active Directory, which in the years following became a widely used directory service in business environments. Four editions of Windows 2000 were released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server; the latter was both released to manufacturing and launched months after the other editions. While each edition of Windows 2000 was targeted at a different market, they shared a core set of features, including many system utilities such as the Microsoft Management Console and standard system administration applications. Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version ever at the time; however, it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda. For ten years after its release, it continued to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month until reaching the end of support on July 13, 2010, the same day that support ended for Windows XP SP2.Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server were succeeded by Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, released in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Windows 2000 is the final version of Windows NT that supports PC-98, i486 and SGI Visual Workstation 320 and 540, as well as Alpha in alpha, beta, and release candidate versions. Its successor, Windows XP, only supports x86, x64 and Itanium processors.
At some point I’d think you would have left windows behind for most daily tasks. I left around 20 years ago and haven’t had a problem at all.
Yeah, okay, so this was all just a "Omg just use Linux" type post.
Not everyone can conveniently just ditch a major OS for something with less support. Like I said before, there is a reason everyone isn't just jumping ship for Linux. People have plenty of legitimate reasons for it from work, to time commitment, to driver support, required software that doesn't support it, etc.
Good for you that you can switch and deal. Not everyone can. I'm not sure why so many Linux proponents are entirely fucking blind literally every possible reason that might keep someone off Linux and have to come fucking flying in on crusades on some fucking high horse of "Oooh, what peasants, of course everyone should just be switching to Linux!"
Fuck off with your condescending bullshit.
I use macOS.
Same problems, different name, and some new problems thrown in on top. Moving along.
Such as?
I must admit, I really enjoyed fucking around in M$ Office 2003 (PowerPoint, FrontPage and more) as a kid — we made our own fictional "OS" Desktop Environments in PowerPoint, copying text boxes, drop-down menus etc. from FrontPage. It had a lot of new features that Office XP didn't have, which made our projects much cooler. It was like the best of both worlds, since it had a somewhat classic UI but also added features we found interesting for our weird niche usecase. Since Office 2003, it's only been getting worse, IMO.
I like LibreOffice, I used it it university, and before Libre I used openoffice and staroffice before that.
BUT! Since working in an ms office reliant organization for more than 10 years, I've become addicted to ms office's grammar checks and integration with onedrive/sharepoint. Version control is integrated, I don't have to alt tab to a terminal to submit to svn/git, and we have comments and live collaboration.
I sometimes wish that I could have working grammar check in other software than microsoft's. Writing my final thesis in word, only to copy the sections into texniccenter for layout was tedious.
OnlyOffice if you want an editor similar to Word. I switched to it also because LibreOffice's UI bugged out and I didn't see any buttons.
Thanks! I'm trying it out and see if it meets my meager needs for home use office type software. It seems lighter weight than LibreOffice.
I like to think that LibreOffice is a great alternative to those used to 2003 and older MS Office, and OnlyOffice is a good alternative to those used to post-2003 MS Office.
VBA automation backend
That was in the first Word for Windows for 1989. The scripting built into word was later rebranded as VBA. I used it in 1990 to replicate the "Give me a Cookie" prank that was on Vax/VMS at the time.
I feel like anytime I've ever taken a class to learn how to use Word, it's been one of two things.
First is essentially how we will use Word. It's a note pad with a few extra things for editing text, but the main thing is headers, footers, and the margin sizes.
Second is nothing I will ever use. When I was going to school for accounting I had to take a class on Windows programs, and we spent so much time learning how to post images, how to edit them, and shit like that. By the end of the class I could probably make a profesional looking flyer, but it would have taken half the time with any image editing type program.
Also in that class we had a free students version of Word, which meant that there were usually steps in the homework we couldn't do, but we still got points docked for it. Even though we all told the professor about this. So that was fun.
AbiWord was always a good one. Their format was weird but it wasn't limited to that.
Old word processors were designed to make sure to include features both the consumer and the professional (who would need things like markup tools, special margin widths, etc.) would need. Then professional printers moved on to better software, but Microsoft (and others) never removed those features and that turned into 'how many features can we add' until now Word is like some sort of shitty combination of a WordPad and PowerPoint. It's so full of unnecessary features that have a one case in ten thousand uses.
It's not even just the word processors themselves. This has been going on for decades. Why are dingbats fonts packaged with computers? Because they were printers marks and Apple wanted printers to use their computers, so they added a font with printers marks and then Microsoft did the same with Windows and now we still have a font which is used mostly by kids fucking around because there are now better and easier ways to use the one or two characters in that font set that you will ever likely even think about using.
The more OSes and software trim themselves of this fat, the better, but it goes the other direction most of the time.
I think Word js really more like a combination of Wordpad and Publisher.