Submitted 1 year ago by nahostdeutschland@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
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!
Likely you’ll have to pay for some AI service, because the executives’ children cried after watching an old sci-fi, that “we can’t have intelligent conversations with out computers in 2016 in the real world, while in 2015 in the movie adaptation of Don’t Build The Torment Nexus, there was Torment Nexus the intelligent and smart computer”.
Oh god, how will replace a completely basic word processor? Surely there are not numerous replacements?
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.
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.
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?
Not the article, I meant the comment section
Are people just going to keep reposting this misleading shit headline of a post until no one reads the article and just goes along with it?
Are the people constantly reposting this even reading the article and realizing how illiterate they look?
The click bait will never die my friend.
We should never tire of pointing it out though.
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!
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.
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.
I game a ton and the only missing games these days are malware.
I use notepad alongside notepad++ it is fine.
I use Notepad on my work computer daily. I never save any documents, but it is handy for a quick copy/paste of info I need for a short period of time. We aren’t allowed to install anything on the computers, so it’s what is available.
I could live without it, but I do find it marginally useful, basically as digital “scrap paper”.
Notepad is useful for saving a simple piece of info to your hard drive somewhere, it’s not a daily driver for code editing or anything. If I’m on the phone with some customer service rep and they give me some reference number, I’ll pop open notepad to write it down and save it.
Seriously though, Android, macOS, Steam OS, Android TV, Chrome OS, Debian, heck, Ubuntu, Linux Mint
Some of those are not competitors to Windows. Android, Android TV, Steam OS are installed on specialty devices.
macOS is not a good OS. I wouldn’t consider it a better alternative to Windows. macOS often lags behind Windows in certain features such as tiling Windows. Apple is more hostile toward developers than Microsoft is and Apple ships their own versions of coreutils which are vastly inferior GNU coreutils and often totally out of date (Apple uses a build of bash from 2007 that was the default shell until the switch to zsh, and they STILL ship this bash binary today).
For any other Linux variant, the answer is the same as it has been for 20 years: normies don’t install their own OS, and also only use their machines to browse the internet, so it makes no difference to them.
I have always been partial to gedit, kate aint bad either.
(neo)vim for life :)
My understanding of the different operating systems
MacOS: One time hardware payment for their service (plus for every other device)
Linux: Free as in price free and freedom
Windows: 30+ subscriptions to edit 1 file, then cooldown till next day or upgrade subscriptions to enterpise version for a kidney/per user/per month.
ChomeOS: Communism for the children, supported by the Education System
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
CheomeOS: Let Google silently start tracking your kids until they are old enough to sell all of that accumulated data.
Finally, I can proudly proclaim that I’m no longer bound Microsoft’s bullshit. Been a rocky start, but I’ve been happily using Kubuntu on my Surface for a while now, and it’s going awesome
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.
Notepad++ FTW
So, turns out that they final push that convinced me to start learning Linux is the ol’ Text Document.txt of all things. Swear to God, I thought that it would be the automatic updates nuking my unsaved work (again), but here we are…
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.
Oh, one of the first things I did was group policy edit anything to do with tracking, ads, or AI.
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.
Upvoted for visibility.
I recommend Notepad++.
I use Kate on the windows work pc
Is the Genevieve AI enabled by default?
After opening the notepad app does it ask you for that login?
Is your access to notepad restricted by the login?
“But it turns out that, while this screenshot is indeed real, those eagle-eyed enough should already be able to tell that something isn’t quite lining up here. In fact, nearly any Windows 11 user could open up the fully updated Notepad without getting this pop-up at all, even if they aren’t already signed into a Microsoft account. So, what’s the deal here?”
“The key is in the exact wording, identifiable within the first sentence: “Sign in with your Microsoft account to use Rewrite and its features in Notepad.” This is a prompt that exists, yes, but one that’s exclusive to Copilot+ PCs and explicitly requires the user to trigger it by clicking the Rewrite button, as confirmed by our own testing.”
tomshardware.com/…/no-notepad-for-windows-11-does…
techradar.com/…/seen-those-complaints-online-abou…
Please read the article. No. My access to notepad is not restricted. I also don’t run any copilot features of any kind on windows 11. Yes, I believe Generative AI Copilot is enabled by default, but in this case the only time you get promoted to login is when you use a feature in notepad that directly needs copilot in order to work and you the user have to select that feature. Meaning you can use notepad without it entirely and never even see this prompt at all.
How much shit are people going to endure before realizing Windows isn’t for them any more?
Dump the damn thing and use Linux. Yes, Linux is friendly, easy to use, you can play most games, you don’t need your proprietary programs because there are Free alternatives that are just as good that might take you a moment to adjust to (don’t cry about how it’s different, that’s Baby Duck Syndrome), and so on.
And Microsoft facilitates fascism and government spyware and all sorts of evil crap. So does Apple. And Google. Throw away your phone, use Linux on your PCs, free yourself.
Crying about it being different isn’t baby duck syndrome; saying it’s better/worse compared to what you’re used to is.
People just don’t want to spend hundreds of hours re-learning things that already work for them.
It is objectively easier to stick with something you know than to learn something new, so that’s what most non-technical users do.
Pretty much everyone in IT should learn linux at some point though.
If you are in IT I’d hope you know some version of Unix. Consumers I wouldn’t expect them to know, they just want it to work and don’t care about configurations and how it works.
Linux is as messy and more as the apartment where I live (really bad).
If you want the operating system to make sense, use OpenBSD (no Wine, no Linux emulation, thus only native games) or NetBSD (there is Wine and Linux emulation, but limited) or FreeBSD (generally can do the same as Linux), but all three port graphics drivers from Linux with significant lag, and hardware support is worse in general.
And Microsoft facilitates fascism
There’s a lot of Linux in systems that governments and militaries use.
Throw away your phone,
Yes, right. Also change job so that an Android device for 2FA weren’t a requirement. And get used that I can’t communicate with someone over TG/WA/VK in transport.
And still be surveilled, because the information you give about yourself without an Android phone is sufficient, carrying one is a symbolic decapitation of your privacy and dignity, “symbolic” is the word.
It’s so stupid that they’re making these additions to notepad. There is a need to have a basic text editor on an OS that isn’t going to try to “help” by giving recommendations, automatically backs up files or whatever other shit they’re trying to jam into it.
They had wordpad and if they wanted to add additional features into that, that’s completely fine. There are use cases for something that does a bit more than a simple text editor like notepad can do.
My guess is that they tracked that people used notepad more often than wordpad so they removed wordpad. Then started making notepad more like wordpad without considering why people used notepad more frequently.
Telemetry was a mistake
It is batshit crazy. Notepad was never meant to be what they are making it into. Not even WordPad should have AI nonsense. It’s just not for that.
Sure but with Wordpad I wouldn’t much care if they spam it up with this kind of crap. It’s something that doesn’t have much use now, because there’s notepad for basic text files and Word or Libre Office for actual word processing. So if someone wanted something to type up some notes that get automatic backups, and have AI recommendations (not that it would be me, but who knows?) just put it on there so we still have a simple text editor that’s installed by default.
If they’re going to enshittify something at least don’t enshittify the basic tools of the OS.
And around 20 years ago I did go all-in Linux.
They could’ve added this to wordpad if they didn’t kill it.
Good thing whenever I set up Windows, Notepad is one of the things I nuke, using Geany to replace it.
Geany FTW!
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple does something like this too at some point in the future
lol fuck that
Thanks god that I’m not using windows for 4 years now, and at least notepad++ exists.
Why would a bot be using notepad?
It’s like they want people to use npp instead
Linux
End of conversation.
I think that’s the start of the conversation. Which Desktop Environment?
I want a clean, advanced, well designed desktop and Im okay with redoing my work flow
Use Gnome
Gnome is cool but can it be slightly more Windows?
Use Cosmic (PopOS)
I want lots of customization, advanced features, and a traditional windows desktop metaphor
Use KDE
I want Windows and don’t really care about customization
Use Cinnamon
Dude the Windows 9x look was fucking dope
Use Mate
Im installing this on a potato
Use XFCE
Gnome is an opinionated desktop environment and that turns some people off. But it’s bold enough to make some design decisions and have a limited scope. KDE tries to be another Windows alternative.
Of course, you could go with a tiling window manager but my vote goes to Gnome. I’ve had a very smooth experience on Gnome for the last couple years.
I really like my KDE plasma
IMO:
want to show off? i3wm with gaps and rofi for menu launcher. Add it some transparency effects too.
want the MacOS style? Gnome. Default on a lot of distros.
want something stable? XFCE. Install and forget.
Well… it just removes so much toxicity from the outset
Notepad has long been a testbed for new technology in Windows. This isn’t just a sign of enshittification, it’s a warning that they want to do more.
The recent update was the first time in decades they’ve touched it. How has it ‘long been a testbed of new technology’ ?
Used only in cases where everything else is not readily available… Pencil, pen, blood, boogers etc. But the most easily replaceable piece of software. Literally you could just paste into a browser’s URL box to do the same job. Lol. There must be some dumb fuck heading Microsoft right now.
It should be noted that you can still use Notepad without a Microsoft account, and users can go as far as removing the Rewrite icon completely from Notepad. Despite the ability to still use the software without an account, Microsoft has received some criticism for implementing what is most definitely a paywall/advertisement for a built-in piece of Windows software.
If you must use windows, Notepad++ is the way to go.
GNU Emacs is the same everywhere you go (if you don’t mind the TUI)
ed is better
VSCode is better than np++ in every way
Clearly this is a controversial statement. I’m team “use what’s available and preference tools that get the job done quickly.”
I work in several different languages. VSCode has TreeSitter and a bevy slick plug-ins. NP++ does not. I can use VSCode on both Windows and Linux. I will hands down pick VSCode over NP++ every time.
Install time? Startup time? Useless bloat?
Those are 2 different t use case pieces of software
I heavily use both and this is objectively untrue.
Fucking click bait garbage article, but thankfully the article has a tldr that basically contradicts the headline
TL;DR: Microsoft has introduced a paywall for Notepad, requiring a Microsoft 365 subscription to access new features like the AI-powered Rewrite tool.
Better headline: Microsoft forces you to pay to suffer through using their AI tool that no one asked for, application otherwise unchanged.
lLMs in general is a tool no in one asked for
This seems like something that should be kept local. What’s the point of all these NPUs otherwise
isn’t the paywall for notepad buying windows and a computer?
Xanza@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The year of the Linux desktop has arrived.