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Microsoft Windows Operating Systems Software Technology

Microsoft Confirms It's Not Killing Off Paint After Outpouring of Support (cnbc.com) 244

Microsoft said late Monday that it will not be killing off its Paint app in the next update of Windows 10. It will be made available via the Windows Store for free and will not be completely removed. CNBC reports: The U.S. technology company recently released a list which labeled Paint "deprecated," meaning it was considering removing the app when the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update gets released later this year. Fans on social media decried the potential death of Paint, which has been in existence for 32 years. But Microsoft released a blog post shortly after to clarify that Paint would not be completely removed, but instead made available via the Windows Store for free. "Today, we've seen an incredible outpouring of support and nostalgia around MS Paint. If there's anything we learned, it's that after 32 years, MS Paint has a lot of fans. It's been amazing to see so much love for our trusty old app," Megan Saunders, a general manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on Monday. "Amidst today's commentary around MS Paint we wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight, clear up some confusion and share some good news: MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the Windows Store where it will be available for free."
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Microsoft Confirms It's Not Killing Off Paint After Outpouring of Support

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  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:50AM (#54872769) Homepage Journal

    On a netbook paint is a handy place to paste a screenshot but on a machine with any kind of capabilities it's kind of the most frustrating tool available.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      for those that aren't ofay with tools like paintshop or gimp paint is incredibly valuable for simple changes. I have Paintshop but their have been many times I have closed it in frustration and just opened the file in paint because the tiny change I needed to make was painfully obscured or overcomplicated in PS. sometimes a simple hammer is better than chest full of high tech gadgets.

      • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @04:35AM (#54872903) Journal
        Paint.net strikes a happy medium there. It's pretty powerful yet easy to use if all you need is to change a couple of pixels. And you get much better support for various file formats. Though I agree it's silly for MS to remove such an incredible useful tool from Windows. Part of its advantage is that it's always there, doesn't have to be installed, so if someone asks how to do something with images, you can always explain how to do that with Paint.
      • by Tuidjy ( 321055 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @11:09AM (#54875123)

        I love Paint.NET, but I do not have it installed at every computer at work. Paint is invaluable to me when I am asking someone at a remote Point of Sale to take a screenshot and e-mail it to me.

        Even our own warehouses have computers running WinXP. We send them replacements from corporate, but the manager takes the old PC, and sticks it on a rack near at the back of the warehouse... and claims that 'it saves the company thousands' when I ask for it back. It's a privately owned company, and I am not gong to bother the owner (who is the only one that can can overrule the warehouse managers) because of a box that my department will end up paying to e-waste. And yes, it will save the warehouse staff some time, and I or my people will end up supporting it.

        Some of the Mon&Pop stores who buy from us also end up talking to me for tech support that is only remotely connected to their using our catalogue or replenishment sites. And some of them are running 2000 and ME.

        So yes, I personally use the lightest of Paint, Paint.NET, or gimp that does what I need, but it is nice to know that all Windows boxes have Paint. And unfortunately, it being available for free on the Windows Store or wherever does little to help. If I have to make them download something, the battle may already be lost.

        • it being available for free on the Windows Store or wherever does little to help

          Same here. It's the second major troubleshooting tool to be removed from a default Windows install. Telnet.exe was extremely valuable in verifying accessible TCP/IP ports from a workstation. So easy you could talk almost anyone through typing the commands.

        • Paint is invaluable to me when I am asking someone at a remote Point of Sale to take a screenshot and e-mail it to me.

          You can paste a screenshot directly into an e-mail using Thunderbird or Gmail, tested on Win7. Might work with other e-mail too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      MS Paint has the advantage of opening insanely fast compared with more recent tools, thanks to it being programmed for computers of another era.

      If you just want a temporary place where to paste an image from clipboard, Paint is a much better target than Paint.net, whose startup time is slow as molasses.

      • by haruchai ( 17472 )

        "Paint is a much better target than Paint.net, whose startup time is slow as molasses"
        What kind of underpowered machine are you on?
        I have a portable version of Paint.NET 4.0 & launching it takes barely 3 seconds for the 1st launch after a reboot and just under 2 for subsequent launches, probably due to its dependency on dotNET 4.x.
        MS Paint launches in less than one but the loss of the extra 1-2 seconds for the extra capabilities isn't going ruin my life.

        • MS Paint launches in less than one but the loss of the extra 1-2 seconds for the extra capabilities isn't going ruin my life.

          It breaks flow to wait here. I'm already waiting to hit CTRL+V. Do you remember when a slow computer would make your keyboard buffer fill up momentarily and you would have to stop typing until it catches up? It's like that. It's a short, but incredibly frustrating delay.

      • IrfanView with text-insert and a "paint dialog" is by far the easier tool to do quick image manipulations in or paste from the clipboard.

    • by xonen ( 774419 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @04:41AM (#54872921) Journal

      The real point of paint is not 'painting', but a basic tool to do file conversions, save a screenshot or acquire an image from a scanner, and maybe some basic text annotations or other stuff.
      They (MS) underestimate it's usefulness. Moving it to the store is almost the same as abandoning.
      99% chance i couldn't care less, now or ever, but for people that work on varying locations or have to administer other people's computers, or (play) helpdesk etc, might be upset. And rightfully.
      It's about the same effect as removing notepad would be. Notepad is a horrible application that even in 2017 still cannot handle line breaks correctly, but it does have it's uses and is part of the standard windows toolkit.
      Last not least - not everyone is permanently connected to the internet. Imho, windows is throwing in it's own windows with moves like this, and narrowing instead of broadening it's user base.

      • It seems to me that the support cost of keeping paint mainlined cannot possibly be enough to justify losing the foot in the door that they have, as paint is a commonly used tool. My guess is quite large numbers of people use it for a wide assortment of simple activities. Cropping, rescaling, adding text, blurring sensitive info, and so on.

        In a very real way the paint program is dead as there are extremely few people actually using it to paint. But those other uses require a tool and I really dont understa
        • Perhaps it is because I come from a Unix design methodology. But if people are doing limited tasks in Paint. Would it make sense to make tool(s) to do the tasks more efficiently.

          • Perhaps it is because I come from a Unix design methodology. But if people are doing limited tasks in Paint. Would it make sense to make tool(s) to do the tasks more efficiently.

            Probably but take that to it's logical conclusion and you get photoshop. Sometimes it's good to have something simple and limited.

          • Would it make sense to make tool(s) to do the tasks more efficiently.

            The amalgam of all those tools looks exactly like a simple paint program.

        • In a very real way the paint program is dead as there are extremely few people actually using it to paint. But those other uses require a tool and I really dont understand why Microsoft would want to opt out of providing that tool. Seems like a no-brainer.

          Not many people use photoshop to take photos or run shops either so the clue isn't always in the name.

      • by Wolfrider ( 856 )

        --Analogy: Removing 'paint' from a default Windows install is almost on the same level as $DISTRO removing 'vi' from a *nix default install. Srsly. Bad idea.

      • Notepad still handles CRLF just fine. Just because you happen to have a lot of LF-only text files doesn't mean that they should comply with your odd format.

        • by chihowa ( 366380 )

          Wordpad is also standard on all Windows systems and handles all line breaks properly. It also doesn't shit itself as often when you open gigantic files.

          • It also opens plain text files as editable rich text. Meaning that just opening and hitting save may not be bit-for-bit the same. And it would probably replace LF with CRLF, though I haven't tried.

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        I would argue that Notepad should be killed off. I am not sure where in the pre-win 3.x world Write first made its appearance externally but Notepad has been obsolete almost ever since. Write was however a bit slow to start on Win 3.x 386-era hardware and did use more memory on often very limited systems. Remember we had 4 - 8MB of memory back than and liked it. Some folks still squeaking by with less. Consequently Notepad was useful for throwing up a README.TXT and similar without taxing the system, or

    • Usually the people who find it on a sketchy looking web site to download.
      Don't get me wrong I love the product. And I wish there was a Native Linux port of it. (Also Notepad++) However when I go to get the product I have to be super careful on what I link, because the site that hosts it is poorly made, and designed to trick people into downloading wrong/bad software too.

    • On a netbook paint is a handy place to paste a screenshot but on a machine with any kind of capabilities it's kind of the most frustrating tool available.

      It's just as easy to put a screenshot into paint on a desktop as it is a netbook or laptop. What are you on about? It's frustrating if you actually want to do anything sure but for screen shots, it's open paint, paste, save. No more or less anything any any platform. Unless you mean doing digital art or whatever on a netbook but why on earth would you want to do that? It'd be like digging with a spoon.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:53AM (#54872773)

    Availability isn't the concern. We want it ubiquitous. Meaning that if someone has windows you know they have paint.

    • by TuballoyThunder ( 534063 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @05:16AM (#54873015)
      Agree. There many environments where one cannot install apps from the Windows Store even if it is free. I use Windows Paint quite regularly for work.
      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        Agree. There many environments where one cannot install apps from the Windows Store even if it is free. I use Windows Paint quite regularly for work.

        On the bright side, maybe this will make organizations include something better than MS Paint in the default desktop image. Together with Powerpoint (or Visio if available) I can usually abuse it to do what I want, but for some things something like Paint.NET would be much better. I don't expect Photoshop on every desktop but it's so extremely rudimentary, I think the only things it does well is:

        1. Crop screenshots
        2. Add filled black boxes to censor sensitive data
        3. Add red boxes to point to the error/discr

    • by asylumx ( 881307 )
      Yup, Bingo, and also this is the answer to the question above "Who isn't using paint.net?" -- the answer is it didn't matter until now because you knew mspaint was there.
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @07:40AM (#54873455)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • None of their "Metro" apps are worth the time it takes to open them. They're all dysfunctional, especially the ones written by Microsoft. Seriously, the browser based version of Bing is more useful than the Bing app, what does that say when Microsoft can't even be bothered to write a decent app for one of their top strategic plans to overtake Google?

    • Well, now you've got ubiquity via the Microsoft Store, and if your "helpee" doesn't have paint installed, you can spend five minutes educating them about the Microsoft Store... free advertising for Microsoft Store - did you get the part in the article where she said Microsoft Store, I think it's something they're promoting.

      And, do you really think a company that pushes lengthy restart updates at you every couple of weeks gives a damn about your time or convenience?

    • Out of curiosity, why?

      I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, but MS Paint always seemed like such a crappy program. Hearing that there's an outpouring of support for keeping it seems weird.

      So let me ask, what's the concern here? Couldn't you just download an alternative? Or does MS Paint do something that other paint programs don't? Is the point that people want some kind of graphic editor pre-installed in Windows? Or if Microsoft open sourced Paint, would that satisfy people? What, exactl

      • by epine ( 68316 )

        I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, but MS Paint always seemed like such a crappy program.

        I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, but Grandma always seemed like such a useless person.

        Yeah, you're right, but she doesn't take up much space and she's the only person in the house who can consistently walk into a strange kitchen and crank out perfect fettuccine noodles without having to hoist an unfamiliar stand mixer onto a foreign countertop, and then dig through all the cupboards for a n

        • So you're implying that this is all about sentimentality? People feel about MS Paint the way a person might feel about their grandmother?
    • by kbg ( 241421 )

      Exactly. I can instruct my grandma through the phone to open paint, paste an image and save it. But trying to get her to create a new Microsoft Account for login into Windows Store and then download Paint from there is just to complex to even work at all.

    • Exactly this.

      Microsoft has NEVER understood the user experience. i.e. It took the 15 years, 1980 until 1995 [wikipedia.org], to offer support for "Long File Names."

      Microsoft, -1 Over-rated User Experience

  • That's no app (Score:5, Insightful)

    by I'm New Around Here ( 1154723 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @03:59AM (#54872789)

    It's not an app, it's a program. Apps suck. MS-Paint lives forever.

  • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @04:12AM (#54872817) Journal

    People who prefer the Windows ecosystem that traces its roots to DOS don't want to interact with a "store" to get things done. Paint has been part of the default install longer than "app stores" have even been a thing. It's like vi on Linux.

    • by Barny ( 103770 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @04:17AM (#54872837) Journal

      To use the Windows Store at all (even for free things), you need to log in with your Microsoft account. Once that is done, you have now matched your install of windows directly to YOU. Congrats, now you get ads and you get a screwed up log in system.

      Basically, they are fishing for ways to encourage people to sync up with their store for ads and more, paint is just the latest bait to do this.

      • 100% Agree. This is another of their tactics to get people used to the Windows Store. Didn't they do the same thing with Solitaire?
        They're hellbent on removing the classic programs from Windows. Soon only the touch-optimized versions will remain. It is as if they wanted to make Windows hip by presenting it as a touch-first OS. "Look, we're just like Android and iOS, please use Windows instead a tablet with them".
        I don't care if they add a touch optimized UI for Windows but please leave the mouse-optimized
        • It is as if they wanted to make Windows hip by presenting it as a touch-first OS

          Still better than Windows 8 that was designed more as a touch-only OS.

      • To use the Windows Store at all (even for free things), you need to log in with your Microsoft account. Once that is done, you have now matched your install of windows directly to YOU. Congrats, now you get ads and you get a screwed up log in system.

        This is not true. If you don't login to Windows with a Microsoft account, you can login directly on a per-app basis (including the Store app) without messing with anything else on the system.

      • To use the Windows Store at all (even for free things), you need to log in with your Microsoft account.

        No you don't. You only need a Microsoft account to pay for a paid app. You can happily log into windows store without a Microsoft account.

    • by iampiti ( 1059688 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @04:55AM (#54872969)
      They want everyone to forget that there was a world where you didn't need a Microsoft login and an app store to do things on Windows.
      If you don't use those how are they going to gather data on you and earn money through their cut on the apps?.
      I don't like iPhones but I don't mind their existance. They only thing I hold against them is that made acceptable the walled garden model to the masses. Now Microsoft is trying the same thing with Windows. Disgusting.
      • They want everyone to forget that there was a world where you didn't need a Microsoft login and an app store to do things on Windows.

        Do they now? Is that why they just added the option of downloading things from the app store without any Microsoft account?

        How ... devious?... of them?

    • by Subm ( 79417 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @06:36AM (#54873223)

      > It's like vi on Linux

      I also use vi for quick image editing on GNU/Linux.

    • > People who prefer the Windows ecosystem that traces its roots to DOS
      > don't want to interact with a "store" to get things done.

      I don't want to be accused of preferring that ecosystem.

      But if Microsoft is bringing back Paint, can they please Please PLEASE bring back edlin!

      And a text based clippy for DOS wouldn't be bad either.
    • The Apple and Microsoft store is pure evil. That is why I use Ubuntu and install everything via apt.

    • It's like vi on Linux.

      Funny that. It seems like the first thing I need to do now when I fire up a new linux install is run apt-get install vi.

  • The plan was to stop supporting and _eventually_ drop it.

    This is in line with the alarming industry trend of dropping something very stable and unchangeable (ergo, does not bring any money) in favor of something experimental and unstable that you will be able to sell to clueless buyers.

    Similar to impossibility of having practically eternal products, stable software products of private industry are impossible as well.

    Have you been to the grocery chains recently? Remember the hype of LED lamps? It was hard to

    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      The plan was to stop supporting and _eventually_ drop it.

      This is in line with the alarming industry trend of dropping something very stable and unchangeable (ergo, does not bring any money) in favor of something experimental and unstable that you will be able to sell to clueless buyers.

      Similar to impossibility of having practically eternal products, stable software products of private industry are impossible as well.

      Have you been to the grocery chains recently? Remember the hype of LED lamps? It was hard to find a good incadescent in my grocery store at one point, majority of the shelf space was covered by LEDs. Now the situation is back to the beginning: majority are incadescents, LEDs are in minority.

      Welcome to the late stage capitalism

      Who buys light bulbs at the grocery store? They are generally marked up between 150-300% of the cost at a big-box retailer.

      I would guess at those prices, turnover is low. I have seen lots of home goods at the grocery store that are laughably out of date. Especially electronics. Your grocery store might have decided that stocking incandescents is better than stocking LEDs since LEDs are still getting cheaper (depreciating) while incandescents are more stable in price.

  • Microsoft announced it will kill Windows an all attached sofware all together. They added that this step is immediate and irrevocable but necessary to spare PC users over the world further suffering.
  • Nostalgic me misses the old QBasic that came with DOS and early Win9x (I seem to recall that it went away after Win98). I taught my daughters their initial lessons in programming in QBasic. . .

    • Lol, in high school all I had was qbasic. I got a book "Qbasic games and more" that provided a TSR that allowed you to use the mouse in Qbasic. On topic, I wrote a Paint-like program in qbasic where you could draw shapes (rectangle, ellipse, etc) and it also did 3d boxes! My program would save to image binary format, OR generate qbasic statements to redraw the graphics. I used it to do my final project in programming class where we had to use graphics statements to make a picture. Of course, my pictur
    • by Wolfrider ( 856 )

      --You can still download Qbasic and use it in Win7 32-bit. Not sure of any Win versions after that, tho.

  • Now, can we get the pinball game back also?

  • Free. At what cost? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sonamchauhan ( 587356 ) <sonamc@NOsPam.gmail.com> on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @09:11AM (#54874025) Journal

    Free stuff is given at the pleasure of the giver.

    Microsoft wants to get you in the habit of asking. Online. Preferably logged in. Definitely viewing ads. Grateful for free stuff. Willing to spend a quid or two for new 'cutting edge' features. Looking around, considering 'buying' some more in its virtual mall.

    I've heard it said that 1.5 Billion people use Windows. Even if 0.1% of these spend 30 seconds per year downloading paint (versus using a copy on disk), that's 6 man years lost. Maybe someone would waste their 30 seconds. Maybe others would spend it on a medical problem and save lives.

    I don't get it - an OS is supposed to be at the beck and call of its owner. Microsoft should be making agents to obey our every intent. Even anticipate our needs and pre-empt the resources to fulfill them with no delay. This behavior forces me to conclude the OS is at Microsoft's beck and call now; that we're merely micro-serfs.

    • I don't get it - an OS is supposed to be at the beck and call of its owner....the OS is at Microsoft's beck and call now; that we're merely micro-serfs.

      Sounds like you have it figured out perfectly. There was just a moment of confusion regarding who the owner was.

    • Maybe others would spend it on a medical problem and save lives.

      Or give the impression that lives are being saved! MSPaint is excellent for cropping out tumors from chest x-rays!

    • I've heard it said that 1.5 Billion people use Windows. Even if 0.1% of these spend 30 seconds per year downloading paint (versus using a copy on disk), that's 6 man years lost.

      I've heard that 1.5billion people use windows. If only 0.1% of the users need it then it collectively wastes: 10126TB of storage space.

  • https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

    Unfortunately, They still don't seem to understand that it should be on desktops by default. I shouldn't need to go to the garbage Windows Store to have a rudimentary image editor on a machine fresh out of the box.

  • Ouf (Score:4, Funny)

    by SCVonSteroids ( 2816091 ) on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @10:17AM (#54874651)

    I can finally rest easy. Yesterday was a very hard day for me. Was having a hard time letting it sink in.

  • After a single day's "outpouring" of support the resurrect paint but after a decade of outpouring hate for the direction Windows is going, it just keeps getting worse.
  • Oh, nice, we get to keep Paint. This totally makes up for not keeping Windows Easy Transfer.
  • I don't remember the last time I ever opened paint. Any windows machine in my house or that I use gets Irfanview installed as the default image program. The only thing it is really lacking is an easier way to draw on photos... it has one, but i don't like it much.

    Between Irfanview and Snagit, all my basic image and capturing needs are covered. If Irfanview had Snagit's photo markup capabilities it would be perfect.

  • I'm using the current Codeweavers Crossover 16.2.0 to attempt an installation of Paint.NET just too look at the app.
    Using a 64-bit Linux OS and installing in a Windows7 64-bit environment (what Paint.NET recommends) and WINE recognizes the need to install .NET Framework 4.6 and accomplishes that, but the application fails to install. The app uses the NullSoft Installer, but I'm not aware of any Linux utility that will unpack a NullSoft archive so I could manually install it in the appropriate WINE bottle.

    Sa

    • by hduff ( 570443 )

      There is a way to unpack the installer (but it's also possible to encrypt the installer contents, so YMMV).
        From their WIKI: "7-zip Since version 9.34 [Jun 2014] it'll extract *beside the files of the setup* the compiled script code to a file named [NSIS].nsi"

      Extraction worked for me. Now to create a bottle and see if it runs . . .

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