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.
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.
To me it isn’t even the bloat and spyware, because you can possibly patch those out. To me the issue with 11 and 12 is that they require you to have TPM which potentially could be used to remotely disable your computer without your consent.
You are better off not encrypting your device with it because you can circumvent TPM entirely if you have physical access or admin rights anyway. (So full disk encryption would not work if you were raided). It is a security flaw, and I am certain that the purpose is to allow backdoors and for Digital Rights Management, and you want neither on your computer.
Well I have good news for you, the TPM can’t do those things. The TPM is just a hardware module that stores cryptographic keys in a tamper-resistant chip, and can perform basic crypto functions.
In of itself, it can’t be addressed remotely, but it is usually used as a component of a greater security scheme. For example, in full disk encryption, it can be used to ensure that disk can’t be decrypted on a different device.
There’s been a lot of FUD surrounding TPMs, and it doesn’t help that the actual explanation of their function isn’t something easily described in a couple of sentences.
There’s no reason to be afraid of a TPM, and for the privacy-minded and security-conscious, it can even be used as part of a greater security scheme for your device and its data.
Of course at the same time, it’s not a feature most home users would make full use of, and as for not liking Windows, carry on. There’s plenty of reasons to avoid it if those things are important to you
May I ask a question out of curiosity? If my system dies on a hardware level, and I have to save my hard drive, how can I access it then if I can’t put it in another system?
Generally commercial drive encryption solutions, like Bitlocker, usually has a backup recovery key that can be used to access the encryption key if your TPM is reset, or if your device dies.
So I guess the short answer is most of these solutions don’t fully protect it from being moved to another device, they just add another layer of security and hassle that makes it harder to do. And without the TPM as part of these solutions, you would be entering a 48-character passphrase every time you boot your device, which has several security flaws of its own.
Assuming you use bitlocker on your PC, how do you know the entire content of the TPM (your bitlocker encryption key, etc) cannot be fetched from the TPM by the manufacturer or any third parties they shared it tools and private keys with?
It is my understanding that every TPM has a predetermined private key inside that you the user cannot see, but how can I be sure no one else does either?
And because it is hardware based, how do I as a user know that it does what it claims it does as I would with a software based encryption software that is open source (like truecrypt/veracrypt).
As for DRM, doesn’t Xbox series have their equivalent chips that specifically is used for DRM? Also wasn’t DRM listed as one of the features when they introduced TPM?
Assuming you use bitlocker on your PC, how do you know the entire content of the TPM (your bitlocker encryption key, etc) cannot be fetched from the TPM by the manufacturer or any third parties they shared it tools and private keys with?
The TPM specification is an open standard by the Trusted Computing Group, and there are certification organizations that will audit many of these products, so that’s a good place to begin.
As with any of the hardware in your device, it does require some amount of trust in the manufacturers you have chosen. These same concerns would apply to anything from the onboard USB controllers to the CPU itself. There’s no way to be absolutely certain, but you can do your due diligence to get a reasonable level of confidence.
And because it is hardware based, how do I as a user know that it does what it claims it does as I would with a software based encryption software that is open source (like truecrypt/veracrypt).
This is a reasonable thing to think about, although very few individuals are qualified to understand and audit the source code of encryption software either, so in most cases you are still putting your faith in security organizations or the community to find issues.
When it comes to security, it often comes with a trade-off. Hardware devices can achieve a level of security that software can’t completely reproduce, but they are a lot harder to audit and verify their integrity.
In any case, the TPM is something that software solutions have to explicitly call in the first place, it isn’t something that activates itself and starts digging into your hard drive. Which means if you don’t want to use it in your security solution, then it will sit there and do nothing. You can keep using your encryption keys in clear memory, visible to any privileged software.
I don’t know specifically about the XBox and how it uses it, but the TPM absolutely can be used as part of a DRM scheme. Since the TPM can be used to encrypt data with a key that can’t be exported, it could be part of a means to hinder copying of content. Of course this content still has to be decrypted into memory in order to be used, so people looking to defeat this DRM usually still can. DRM as a whole is often shown to be a pretty weak solution for copy protection, but companies won’t stop chasing it just the same.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
To me it isn’t even the bloat and spyware, because you can possibly patch those out. To me the issue with 11 and 12 is that they require you to have TPM which potentially could be used to remotely disable your computer without your consent.
You are better off not encrypting your device with it because you can circumvent TPM entirely if you have physical access or admin rights anyway. (So full disk encryption would not work if you were raided). It is a security flaw, and I am certain that the purpose is to allow backdoors and for Digital Rights Management, and you want neither on your computer.
Well I have good news for you, the TPM can’t do those things. The TPM is just a hardware module that stores cryptographic keys in a tamper-resistant chip, and can perform basic crypto functions.
In of itself, it can’t be addressed remotely, but it is usually used as a component of a greater security scheme. For example, in full disk encryption, it can be used to ensure that disk can’t be decrypted on a different device.
There’s been a lot of FUD surrounding TPMs, and it doesn’t help that the actual explanation of their function isn’t something easily described in a couple of sentences.
There’s no reason to be afraid of a TPM, and for the privacy-minded and security-conscious, it can even be used as part of a greater security scheme for your device and its data.
Of course at the same time, it’s not a feature most home users would make full use of, and as for not liking Windows, carry on. There’s plenty of reasons to avoid it if those things are important to you
May I ask a question out of curiosity? If my system dies on a hardware level, and I have to save my hard drive, how can I access it then if I can’t put it in another system?
Generally commercial drive encryption solutions, like Bitlocker, usually has a backup recovery key that can be used to access the encryption key if your TPM is reset, or if your device dies.
So I guess the short answer is most of these solutions don’t fully protect it from being moved to another device, they just add another layer of security and hassle that makes it harder to do. And without the TPM as part of these solutions, you would be entering a 48-character passphrase every time you boot your device, which has several security flaws of its own.
Assuming you use bitlocker on your PC, how do you know the entire content of the TPM (your bitlocker encryption key, etc) cannot be fetched from the TPM by the manufacturer or any third parties they shared it tools and private keys with?
It is my understanding that every TPM has a predetermined private key inside that you the user cannot see, but how can I be sure no one else does either?
And because it is hardware based, how do I as a user know that it does what it claims it does as I would with a software based encryption software that is open source (like truecrypt/veracrypt).
As for DRM, doesn’t Xbox series have their equivalent chips that specifically is used for DRM? Also wasn’t DRM listed as one of the features when they introduced TPM?
The TPM specification is an open standard by the Trusted Computing Group, and there are certification organizations that will audit many of these products, so that’s a good place to begin.
As with any of the hardware in your device, it does require some amount of trust in the manufacturers you have chosen. These same concerns would apply to anything from the onboard USB controllers to the CPU itself. There’s no way to be absolutely certain, but you can do your due diligence to get a reasonable level of confidence.
This is a reasonable thing to think about, although very few individuals are qualified to understand and audit the source code of encryption software either, so in most cases you are still putting your faith in security organizations or the community to find issues.
When it comes to security, it often comes with a trade-off. Hardware devices can achieve a level of security that software can’t completely reproduce, but they are a lot harder to audit and verify their integrity.
In any case, the TPM is something that software solutions have to explicitly call in the first place, it isn’t something that activates itself and starts digging into your hard drive. Which means if you don’t want to use it in your security solution, then it will sit there and do nothing. You can keep using your encryption keys in clear memory, visible to any privileged software.
I don’t know specifically about the XBox and how it uses it, but the TPM absolutely can be used as part of a DRM scheme. Since the TPM can be used to encrypt data with a key that can’t be exported, it could be part of a means to hinder copying of content. Of course this content still has to be decrypted into memory in order to be used, so people looking to defeat this DRM usually still can. DRM as a whole is often shown to be a pretty weak solution for copy protection, but companies won’t stop chasing it just the same.
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.
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.
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!
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.