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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

One more thing pushing me to interface with an online store. One less reason for picking Windows for my "toolbench" computer.

The paranoid in me is expecting there to be a catch to this new paint application. Ads? DLC?

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If you don't trust Microsoft and it's Store, then you shouldn't use Windows in the first place.

It's a perfectly good OS with a bunch of junk installed, whether by Microsoft, a OEM, or both. Working around the crap has been the norm for as long as I can remember.

Some of us consider the telemetry and forced updates "junk" that disqualifies it from being a "perfectly good OS" since you cannot uninstall them and need to keep fighting the OS to keep them off.

One can have cynical thoughts about their future plans but still have a certain degree of trust in more important aspects of the OS.

It'll probably be worse in every way, like calc.exe in Windows 10.

Not just me then. I hated Windows 10 Calc so much, that I copied over calc.exe from Windows 7 and made the following registry change:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\CALC.EXE

  (Default)   C:\<PATH-TO-WINDOWS7-CALC>\calc.exe
  Path        C:\<PATH-TO-WINDOWS7-CALC>

Presto! Whenever you Win+R, Calc.exe - you get the Windows 7 one instead. This would work for any of the other apps listed in 'App Paths' too (or you can add your own).

I've done the same thing with paint.exe from Windows XP. I prefer that version to the one with the ribbon UI.

Had tried to do this before and did not work. As I'm curious, just tried it again and the Win7 calc just does not want to run.

So wondering why it would work on your end. Do you have an old .net runtime on your machine perchance?

Possibly. Or it's an earlier version of calc.exe I'm actually using - I'm not sure.

If you think you can trust me (you can!) - try this one:

http://www.jaruzel.com/files/calc.zip

Thanks. Pretty sure that it is not a Win7 version, your binary is from 2001 and only 100kB.

In that case I'll stick with Microsoft Calculator Plus from 2005. Now if you need a binary of that... then I can post a link for you. :)

Actually here you go: http://www.vimalin.com/download/CalcPlus.zip

The installer in the zip is signed by Microsoft.

Found your version :p Just bumped into my calc archives and did a binary compare with a Windows XP archive I had of it and it matched. So turns out it is from Windows XP and yes that one works.

Wow, XP?! Well, I still like it, and it's still better than the Windows 10 one :)

Agreed, turns out that it was the one I was using myself too. Until I just swapped it out for calculator plus. The only issue I had was that I wasn't able to setup a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+C), but just figured that one out.

Turns out that if you create a shortcut via the send To "Desktop (Create shortcut)" that you can then set it up a keyboard shortcut via properties. As long as your shortcut is on the desktop or in the menu then the keyboard shortcut works. Yay.

But then since it was from xp and not win7 and you didn't know that, does that mean that your calc.exe is something you downloaded off some random site on the net trusting that it didn't contain malware?

Nope. I just have a crap memory.

On the other hand, rather than continuing to bundle software almost noone uses, they move it to an accessible place for people who want it. What more do you want from them?

> On the other hand, rather than continuing to bundle software almost noone uses, they move it to an accessible place for people who want it.

You mean like the 20 UWP apps that I can't uninstall because they made everything intertwined on purpose? Don't bother trying to link some random PowerShell/GPO/registry hacks because I know about all of them. It always breaks something (varying from release to release)

> What more do you want from them?

No ads and invasive telemetry

I was able to uninstall everything I wanted to.

A few examples that you can't normally uninstall are Cortana (" Windows Search "), Camera, Alarms/Clock, Email/Calendar, Movies/TV, Pictures, Photos, 3D, Voice recorder, Groove Music, Maps, Messages, One Note, Paint 3D, People, Sticky Notes, Xbox, Xbox Game Speech.

You can certainly remove some of them manually or using 3rd party solutions but something eventually goes wrong specially after an update. I mean I can remove most of the executables from the Windows folder, my point is that it's going to break something eventually. Removing Cortana and SearchUI used to work before AU, now it just freezes my start menu completely.

I'd like to completely remove Cortana, or at the very least completely cut it off from any kind of internet access. I got it mostly hidden and voice access disabled, at least.

Oh, come on. Everyone annotates a screenshot for e-mail every once in a while.

i'm guessing there will be a new EULA to accept prior to downloading it from the store.

Why? There isn't for the other apps they have on there.

ok, then i assume it's one EULA for everything in the store, that customers now choose to install themselves and is not part of windows. ie. it is a new product. otherwise, what is the point of moving it?

It's part of a bigger trend that MS is engaged in to move most of their apps to the App Store: Mail, Feedback Hub, Calendar, Maps, etc, are all in the Store. It makes updating one of the apps separate from updating the OS (and Windows Update). This is a net positive move for consumers, I think.

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