[MiddleEndian]

>backwards compatibility

They are getting worse at this. I bought a Surface Laptop Studio 2 two years ago. Windows Mail and Windows Calendar, two nice minimalist programs from Microsoft, were actively killed in this time. If you open them, it will redirect you to a new ad-laden Outlook app. If you somehow get a workaround going through the registry, they still fuck with it because the (incredibly simple) UI somehow has network dependencies.

I use MailSpring for email and no longer have a native calendar on my fairly expensive laptop from Microsoft. This is actually what drove me over the edge to switch to Linux for my workstation. Unclear exactly what I'll do for my next laptop but it won't be from MS.

[Wowfunhappy]

That's not a lack of backwards compatibility, that's an app purposefully self-destructing itself!

What I'm talking about is, if your widget factory uses some app to calibrate all the widgets which was written by a contractor in 2005, it probably still works fine on Windows 11.

[dham]

I used some software called Project 5 from Cakewalk back in 2006, as well as VST plugins. I can still install it and use it on Windows 11. Meanwhile, basic plugins from that time stopped working on Mac OS X Lion.

[MiddleEndian]

That detail is definitely true, I just think that in practice the frustration with behavior like this from MS will trickle down(/up/whatever direction). Like the benefit of Windows as a regular user or power user was also that after the pain of dealing with whatever shit MS decided, you could configure it more-or-less however you wanted and it would not change. It will be delayed in the corporate world but it will happen.

[vee-kay]

Just use Thunderbird Portable as email client.

Since M$ is doing away with simple free apps (such as Mail) and forcing users to move to cloud-based expensive apps, you can use FOSS (Free and Open Source) alternatives -- especially the Portable ones (e.g., apps from PortableApps.com) that don't need an install, they can run off a USB drive, and app+userdata can be easily backed up without fuss.

https://alternativeto.net/software/mail-calendar-people-and-...

[MiddleEndian]

I tried Thunderbird first, but unfortunately it was kinda heavy and was fairly unreliable, which kinda tracks with my experience before (at least on Windows). Mailspring works fine and is also open source.

Couldn't find a decent minimalist calendar program that integrated well with Windows. People say they like OneCalendar but I refuse to use the Windows Store, I even got WSL set up without it lol

[int_19h]

Try Vivaldi. It's a "kitchen sink" browser in the same vein as Opera used to be back in its days of glory, so it comes with an email and calendar client that can be optionally turned off:

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-mail-calendar-feed-reader-a...

But you can also just use it as an email client and ignore the browser part.

[MiddleEndian]

Vivaldi's email client is kinda clunky as well and has no way to show just my "inbox" (mail without any labels) from Google as far as I can tell, just one big unread chunk. And the calendar seems to just be a column on the left of the browser.

Either way, MailSpring works fine for email, and I've recently discovered Fantastical for a straightforward calendar program.

But it's absurd that I have to do this at all. At a minimum, if I buy a laptop, Microsoft should not be able to actively break it without refunding me 100% of the purchase price.

[int_19h]

My "favorite" part about the new Win11 email client is that it pulls your emails to their servers.

[codingrightnow]

The Vivaldi web browser tab groups are a killer feature. It's my main browser because of this.