[profpandit]

Absolutely. Paint is by a long shot, Microsoft's best product. It's easy to build since it's codebase is pretty small and they haven't changed it much since it was introduced. So it's rock solid. IDK why they're fixing what ain't broke.

[mjevans]

Worse; Paint is part of a lot of troubleshooting 'screenshot' processes; precisely because it IS easy to use and is /already included/.

Quickly taking a look at the most used products where I work...

MS Office Installer https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

MS Word (I stopped here) https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

Darn, it would be nice if MS was forced to break up in to different product divisions so that their Office product would be released on various platforms.

[ntauthority]

Except... it is released on various platforms. That 'Linux desktop' isn't part of it doesn't mean that Office isn't on pretty much every other relevant platform (Windows desktop, macOS, Android, iOS, web, ...).

[radiorental]

They clearly nailed it, this video from the dev team shows how the understood their users and stuck to the requirements instead of the typical MS feature creep product

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxx2KcPWWZg

[rnet85]

You know that's a parody right?

[jimbokun]

"Opens in a matter of...minutes!"

[radiorental]

There's so many little details like the pretentious double barreled names and the fact that every scene has a either a mac mouse or keyboard in it (o;

[pjc50]

I still sometimes miss the old Paint with dither-pattern floodfills. The current Paint still supports lower bit depth bitmaps but not dithering.

[dfox]

I have feeling that dithered fills have nothing to do with Paint itself but were feature of GDI, even one pixel wide lines and such things were dithered when drawn with dithered color.

It probably got removed in Windows 2000, when GDI gained alpha channel support, as the dithering mode was specified in upper byte of 32b COLORREF, which probably got at least internally repurposed as alpha (also, alphablending dithered surfaces is not exactly sane thing to do).

[cbr]

I remember dithered fills being in Paintbrush itself, using Windows 3.1. My memory is you had 16 colors to work with, and to get more than that it supported dithered colors. You could have, say, a red/yellow checkerboard. The UI let you treat these like other colors: you could save them, and draw with them. When you did that, each pixel in your BMP would be set to of the 16 allowed, but the overall impression would be of more than 16 colors.

To see this, go to https://classicreload.com/windows-31.html and then open Accessories > Paintbrush.

[dfox]

I've actually used Windows 3.1.

In Paintbrush you had palette of 20-ish colors, which were or were not dithered depending on whether they were displayable by your graphics adapter. (The default palette consisted of 16 default EGA/VGA colors and few dithered ones, with particularly notable burgundy-ish color that almost didn't look dithered). In the control panel you could set arbitrary 24b RGB colors for user interface elements which were dithered in exactly the same way.

Interesting thing related to this is that Windows 3.1 had significantly different default color scheme depending on what graphics driver you selected during installation. The really default color scheme was similar to OS/2 2.x (pastel colors, active window title with black text on light blue background, different background color for MDI master and slave windows) and significantly different one was used for graphics drivers with 16 or less colors (ie. the one that everybody remembers, with white text on dark blue or black background for active window title bar). Obviously the reason for this was to eliminate dithering in default color scheme.

On the other hand, this was not applied consistently. Windows 3.1 post installation tutorial essentially introduced the pastel yellow (also used in the default color scheme for MDI window background) as the "help popup color", even thought this color was dithered on VGA. Another inconsistency was that Windows 3.1 shipped with CTRL3D.DLL and some (2 or so) applications that used it. (Until Windows 10's consistent Metro-ish style I regarded CTRL3D as the most consistent UI that Windows ever had, because most applications consistently used this same UI style. The Windows 95 HIG mandated style is also nice, but it was never used consistently used by anyone, not even Microsoft itself).

[isostatic]

"I've actually used Windows 3.1"

God I feel old. Please tell me I'm not the only one who uses dosshell, or hacked gorilla.bas

[bouke]

I learned programming in Qbasic. My parent's computer had some "menu" launcher, which let you choose between Win 3.1 and DOS. Most games (Doom / Lemmings / Commander Keen) were DOS based. So yeah, do I need to feel old now?

[crispytx]

Agreed! Paint was the only Microsoft product that I actually loved.

[Karunamon]

They did the same thing with the calculator, turning what is probably the simplest app on the entire computer into a Metro-ified flat-design-meme store-dependent mess for absolutely no benefit.

[jzebedee]

I went to open my calculator this morning and it told me it was in the middle of an update and to try again later. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes later it still wasn't done. I ended up using Google to calculate some basic math! How does Microsoft screw up such a simple application?

[Blaaguuu]

I've opened up the calculator a couple of times and gotten a prompt to rate/review it on the Windows Store... What is the purpose of doing that with built-in apps? It's just annoying.

[qrbLPHiKpiux]

Any app that prompts m for a review is an automatic one star.

[cakedoggie]

Welcome to windows. They have finally started bringing out great laptops, but I can just never go back to Windows.

[nikanj]

But now the UI is made with XML. XML is cool. The execs read that in a magazine.

[smcl]

A Metro-ified flat-design-meme store-dependent mess which takes a noticeable delay to load.

I've taken to firing up an instance of IDLE instead - which is actually a little nicer in the end

[pletnes]

You need to give ipython a go.

[smcl]

I have one deployed on Digital Ocean (http://blog.mclemon.io/fedora-jupyter-on-a-linux-remote-usin...) but it's just not as convenient or quick as a local python repl for quick calcs and sums.

[pletnes]

Cool post! But I run ipython / jupyter console locally for such use cases. It's nicer than plain python IMHO. Tab completion, coloring etc.

[Spearchucker]

The new calculator is more useful to me than what came before. It does conversions too, which I use heavily. I like it.

[vxNsr]

The calc from Windows 7 also did conversions while being really quick to load and have tons of keyboard shortcuts.

[JohnJamesRambo]

I read that as conversations and thought Microsoft invented some bizarre calculator based messaging app hybrid.

[neilparikh]

Doesn't Windows include both the old calculator and the new calculator? I'm on Windows 8 and I have both.

[Karunamon]

10 yanks away calc.exe and replaces it with the metro version. You have to grab an old copy if you want the original back.

[FRex]

cmd.exe and calc.exe from ReactOS can be used since ReactOS aims to be fully binary compatible. They look a bit bad though.

Or this is a good opportunity to use tools not built into the OS or write own replacements. It's a bit silly to have calc program dictated by the OS version.

[simon83]

I wonder if you could get into legal trouble if you start to re-distribute calc.exe from older Windows version, as a free download. Probably yes, but it would look so ridiculous if MS lawyers would go after a random person doing that.

[wila]

The thing is that your Windows 8/7/Vista/XP versions of calc don't even run on Windows 10. The only thing you can run is the Calculator Plus that was released for XP. Of course Microsoft did remove the download for that one.

[vxNsr]

>>I'm on Windows 8

Genuinely curious, why?

[enimodas]

Not him, but I would have stayed on 8.1 too if it weren't for processor support. The only annoying thing about it is the start menu, which i only use for maybe 10sec/month. It's faster than win7 and has a bunch of features I would miss, and compared to 10 it's not as bloated with non-win32 apps with less functionality for everything, tracking that you can turn off, and all the other win10 stuff you've heard already.

[uxp100]

I am also on Win8 (some of the time) and those are the reasons.

What is the processor support issue?

[neilparikh]

I forgot to update to 10 during the free period and I don't feel like paying $100 since windows 8 still works fine.

[atomicfiredoll]

It really I've was already using Launchy instead of Cortana. So, when I saw what a mess Calculator had become in 10, Launcy ended up replacing that too for simple calculations.

It's sad, because by themselves programs like Paint and Calculator are simple. But, when done well, they come together to improve the quality of life while using Windows.

[buzzybee]

Some time ago someone recommended SpeedCrunch to me for calculator stuff and I use it all the time now. It's a little bit less intuitive since it takes a syntax instead of presenting buttons, but it does a ton more.

[Itsdijital]

The programming mode is invaluable to me. I do a lot of embedded stuff and it is an absolute godsend.

If any knows any other good simple programs for bitwise operations and binary conversion then I'm all ears.

[ben-schaaf]

I sometimes use a python REPL instead of a calculator. Python has `bin()` for binary representations. Plus imaginary numbers are built in. For more complicated stuff I reach for Wolfram alpha.

[mattss]

Powershell.exe

[lightedman]

You don't have a Kensington Keyhub? Calculator built-in, awesome for laptops and desktops.

[ProAm]

> IDK why they're fixing what ain't broke

No telemetry.

[snarfy]

It will come back as a windows store app.

[tedunangst]

Like the sad joke that is "minesweeper".

[pavel_lishin]

What's minesweeper like now? I'm still on Windows 8.

[runlevel1]

Apparently it's now free with ads: http://www.pcgamer.com/windows-10-solitaire-requires-a-subsc...