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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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Will it?!
I thought WordPad was the best thing ever in 2001.
Then I got Microsoft Word. Then Google Docs changed everything by making it free and haven’t even thought of WordPad since.
I dunno something something LibreOffice before the Linux nerds beat me up.
Not a Linux nerd, LibreOffice is what we use on our five windows computers because it’s free 🤷
Wordpad was good for notes with wrapped text. However then I discovered Notepad++ and that’s the far better note taking application - you can even get plugins like a comparitor that compares two different files, as well as being an excellent application for typing and viewing code.
Collabora’s cool too!
There are dozens of us!!! Dozens!!!
(not me though I never used it)
Literally 10s of 1s!
I’m not really sure what Word pad is.
Its like an ipad, but for poor aspiring writers
Everybody’s talking about it?!
It’s the latest sensation!
WordPad on the street!
The writing’s on the wall
The only times I’ve ever opened wordpad was on new Windows installs when I hadn’t installed another word processor or hadn’t changed the default editor for RTF files.
Dumb question but does it spy on you like everything else?
Not a dumb question! I wouldn’t be surprised if it does though I can’t say for sure it does. With how little development it’s gotten recently, I want to say no it doesn’t spy nearly as much because it likely hasn’t been updated with more spying, though. But I obviously don’t know for sure, they might have went in and added telemetry while changing little else UX or functionality wise.
LibreOffice has its flaws but it’s functionally superior to Wordpad and (IMO, and this is probably an unpopular opinion) not far behind Microsoft Office, almost on par. It’s also open source and still gets regular updates. So if you’re looking for a privacy friendly alternative to Microsoft Office I’d suggest that and not risk it with Wordpad.
Though, the Windows OS itself’s spying definitely swamps whatever spying Wordpad does or doesn’t have, so the point is kind of moot, you’re being spied on about the same with or without Wordpad, same applies to LibreOffice as it can’t do anything about Windows’s spying. I encourage everyone to at least try Linux as a dual boot or on a second computer if you already have one of those, even if you can’t fully migrate away from Windows for whatever reason.
I couldn’t care less. I never used it. Was either notepad++ or office. I’m pretty sure with all the telemetry they have, they knew no one really use it anymore and it’s not worth it.
I’m amazed I had to scroll this far too find any mention of notepad++
I mean Notepad++ is like a monument to Microsoft incompetence and them not caring about technically minded people for decades. Where a single guy beats trillion dollar company’s ass, actually not just beats, absolutely destroys big time. And they were either not able or didn’t care with responding and providing some power text editor. The fact that their OS was able to acquire any significant market share in developer’s community is an ultimate triumph of marketing department
Will it? Notepad++ all the way man.
Regular notepad is starting to get a LOT more features. I could see notepad essentially filling that void if they keep up the pace.
I absolutely love the multiple tabs and automatically preserving unsafe stuff.
At the same time, if I open notepad I’ve got like 400 pages of unsafe craft sitting around. Still worth it though.
Unsafe or unsaved?
400 pages of “rusty razor blades”
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No, he won’t
Who’s going to miss Wordpad?
RIP WordPad.
I almost never used it (in fact, I only heard of it when its death was announced, striesand effect in action), but this is sad. It’s a bygone relic of when software was included with what you paid for, simple and efficient, and not marred by endless storage hungry updates that rarely add anything useful.
There is no easy replacement.
Of course, Microsoft wants you to use Word, which is expensive and runs at 0.05x the speed of WordPad.
There’s notepad, but it’s far too basic.
Notepad++ exists and is really good (I donated to it recently), but it targets a different kind of text editing, focused more on code than documents.
LibreOffice is good for document editing, but it’s somewhat slow and clunky in a way WordPad is definitely not.
The closest competitor may be Abiword but that already died years ago.
I bounced around between LibreOffice and OpenOffice for years as I was too cheap to pay for Word. Mainly Libre.
Finally broke down and paid for Office365 when I was struggling to display some (I believe) docx files at the same time my wife was requesting we get it for her work (and this doesn’t even get into struggling to get stuff to display properly for word uses which was constantly a problem).
And man, is it lightyears better than libreoffice. And sure it’s slower, it does a ton more stuff, but if it feels slow to you. . .what kind of computer are you running? I use it on my 8 year old laptop all the time and have never really thought it felt slow.
Wordpad I didn’t even realize still existed. Just looking at it now, I see why. I see very little I gain from NP++ (or I’ve even switched over to VSCode for a lot of things).
I feel like you are making the case for why the only “easy” replacement costs money. The free versions are all extremely limited, or aren’t very good.
I’ll admit I exaggerated slightly (I just opened both today). I have a gaming laptop with a Ryzen 9 5900HX, and opened up both apps from battery power.
WordPad took about 1.5s to open, which is longer than usual.
Word took about 6s to open, which is normal even if I’m plugged in.
LibreOffice would actually take more like 15s to open under these circumstances, which is why I said it’s slow. The clunky part is due to the UX.
Even notepad took over a second to open as well.
I guess I expect more when I have a near top of the line CPU and it pains me to think that it’s even slower for the vast majority of people.
I guess I’m just not too concerned with start up times, having come from the age of HDD. 6 seconds to start, as long as it’s not lagging while I’m using it, is almost unnoticeable.
Yeah that makes sense. I also have a high end SSD so that might also be inflating my expectations.
LibreOffice is lots faster than Word, honestly you can say that about any peice of Microsoft software and its open source equivilant. LibreOffice also displays old document formats better too.
Never used wordpad, honestly surprised to see how many people used it. Maybe someone will start a project to make a simple word processor to replace it.
From my experience Word runs faster and more smoothly than LibreOffice Writer.
Everyone says Word is bloated, but gosh they’re picking the wrong Microsoft software to pick on. Pick on Teams instead. Word is clunky at times and slow but feature rich. Teams is horribly slow and laggy even on fast hardware.
Not really, so many better alternatives
NOTEPAD++ GANG
Not by me. But maybe by like 2-3 folks…
Is it being replaced with something else preinstalled? What the heck do I tell Windows-using coworkers to use when it doesn’t open a text documents automatically from clients??
I’ve installed Libreoffice but Linux has spoilt me as Windows needs a damn reboot to use it properly. I can’t log back in (and one of the setups is also a damn server to the other) :/
I mean, Notepad is still there, and even with its simplicity and other issues (which have gotten a lot better), it’s always been way better for text files than WordPad
Notepad could be fine sometimes but they often have images in the documents given from our clients (who are often equally not skilled with computers).
I am sure Microsoft will just keep nagging them to take an Office 365 subscription.
I’ve installed Libreoffice but Linux has spoilt me as Windows needs a damn reboot to use it properly.
You’re either exaggerating or it’s a problem with LibreOffice.
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I guess I have to switch back to Netscape composer.
Can you add some falling glitter to the mouse while you’re there?
The main reason why I used WordPad was because ‘write’ is shorter than both ‘notepad’ and ‘msword’ in the run menu.
Whenever I need notepad, I just write ‘text’ (for text editor), and it shows up.
Does msword work? Always used winword
oh yeah winword was the right one (my last Windows computer only has LibreOffice so it’s been a hot minute) :P
Did Notepad finally understand Linux line-endings?
Yes for a while now, also has tab support.
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Been using Kate editor (yes, it’s on Windows as well) if I ever decide to boot into Windows 🤢
The KDE for windows software as a whole is pretty good.
I use KDEConnect to combine phone and windows. It although makes changing between OS a lot more fluid.
