My desktop's running Windows 11 and I just checked - it has Paint 3D on it.

Paint 3D was discontinued. If you already had it, you'll be able to continue using it, though it will no longer receive updates, but on a new machine, you're out of luck.

Ah! Sorry.

I was able to reenable the image previewer from win7 on win10. Might be able to do the same.

It's no longer available from Microsoft, but someone uploaded the installer to the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/microso.....8bbwe_20240828

Keep in mind that this is not an official download from Microsoft, so scan the hell out of it, and it will never receive any updates or patches.

I think you will still be able to run your apps, but they might not be the latest and greatest.

I am still using Windows 7. Microsoft wants users to believe Windows 10 will stop working to frighten them into sending more money, but this only means microsoft will no longer create new updates with windows 10 usage in mind. Windows 10 itself will work and other non-microsoft software will probably continue to issue updates and patches that work with 10.

What are you talking about? I've never paid a dime for my updates. The only thing that's necessary are system requirements. THE OS upgrade is free.

Oh that's good. Admittedly I have never gone through such an update but I know that they do charge for it. Just having more control over what users are doing must be enough for them.

I think you're demonizing Windows just a bit much lol it's an operating system not a borg. I've been on 11 for at least 2 years and everything's been smooth.

I bought my mother a computer with windows 11 and it has a lot of stuff going on that I am glad to do without on my own machine, including annoying internet and artificial intelligence integration and sponsored material. That they try to scare users who don't want to upgrade never comes across as altruistic to me.

I got rid of AI. AI is just a thing that a lot of companies are trying to do. It's stupid. The first thing I do when I install a new OS is remove pointless and bloated programs and programs I will never use.

They're not altruistic. They want to make money. And I suspect the software creators paid to put their software on the OS.

First: You absolutely DO NOT need to update to Windows 11 just because of some arbitrary date on the calendar. "End of support" DOES NOT mean "it quits working after that date", nor does it mean it "goes bad" like a bottle of milk past its expiration date.

I've been using Windows 7 for years past its "end of support" date -- in fact, this very laptop I'm typing on now is still on Win7, and it has neither stopped working, nor suddenly become infested with malware, nor let the "magic smoke" out of anything. So don't stress yourself over some arbitrary calendar date just because Micro$oft (and, frankly, their shills in the tech media) wants to stampede everyone towards Win11.

The worst that will happen is that MS will probably do the same thing with Win10 that they did with Win7 -- they'll slip something into the last set of patches (if they haven't already) which, after the Oct. 14th date passes, will periodically pop up and "nag" you about not having upgraded yet. If this happens, there will undoubtedly be tutorials on the internet about how to disable and remove whatever nag-ware process they've installed.

Honestly, most "important program updates and security notices" are overblown anyway. Simply not visiting sketchy websites or downloading programs from unknown sources, using the UBlock Origin adblocker with Firefox, and keeping your PC on a private subnet behind your router (which yours almost surely is, especially if it's on WiFi), will keep things safe enough. Maybe install a 3rd-party security program like Avast or Bitdefender if you're really worried about such things.

Alternatively, you can also buy extended support for 1 year, for $30, and continue to get updates for Win10 from Microsoft during that time. See this article at Tom's Guide: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing.....tober-deadline Personally, I don't think it's really necessary, but it would give you some breathing room while you transition everything to the new laptop if that's what you ultimately decide to do.

Me, I'm sticking with Win10 and Win7 indefinitely. There's nothing in Windows 11 I need or want. :-P

Not only nothing I want, but a whole heap of things I don't. I haven't followed the current state of the blame game on the whole SSD toasting fiasco, but I'm sure that's just the first of many. 11 is a steaming pile.

I have a computer using DOS 6.6 and it runs fine, I would not connect it to the internet though.

I'm pretty sure you can't connect a computer with MS-DOS 6 to the internet even if you wanted to, since no version of MS-DOS I know of has a network stack to begin with.

(Novell DOS 7 had networking for Novell LANs built-in, but it wasn't Internet-capable, as such, since it wasn't using UDP or TCP/IP; Netware used its own proprietary data protocol, if I recall correctly.)

Odd, as I had internet access the same time as I had my BBS. Then what does it matter, I still have DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, Win etc etc etc... I never throw anything away, it is a habit that you get into when you grow up having nothing. Five children, MSgt's pay rice and beans, lucky to get a cheap meat once a week, mainly Sundays. And Yule was hand me downs from my aunts sons.

Win 10 Pro 64 bit.

Well, if you had Windows 3.1 installed, you could get on the internet with that, if you installed Trumpet Winsock (remember that?) to provide the TCP/IP and UDP layers.

I used to still have a lot of those old software and disk sets, myself. About a year ago, I finally accepted that I was never actually going to do anything with them again, though, so I took them all to the Vintage Computer Fest and set them out on the "swapmeet" table. They were gone within a couple of hours, so at least they all found good homes with someone who'll actually use them.

Well put. I personally hated the GUI changes of 11 mostly so I will be clinging to Win 10 for as long as possible. Classic Shell can restore the familiar 10 look but is not fully compatible and might corruption or cause severe display glitches as it asking Windows 11 to do things it wasn't meant to do. I ran into this on my only PC with 11 a gaming laptop after an update and had to reinstall 11 to fix it. Annoying. Why do programmers hate what came before? If it worked for the user, no reason to change it, but to eliminate the options of the classic look is just plain rude such as taking away the option to dock the task bar to all sides of the display.

Well, "Classic Shell" has been deprecated for some time now; the original author stopped working on it at the end of 2017. The current replacement is "OpenShell", which is an open-sourced fork of Classic Shell that's still being actively maintained. It works fine with Windows 10 -- I haven't tried it on Win11 yet, because the only Win11 system I have is a workplace-issued laptop that's pretty much locked down by IT when it comes to installing "unapproved" 3rd-party software.

And having gone down the GUI-change route with the stuff we make where I work -- it's not necessarily being driven by the programmers. A lot of this stuff comes from the sales department, and product management, who are always chasing what they think are the latest trends. The monkey-see, monkey-do instinct of "Market research says our competitors are doing X, so we need to do it too!" is behind a lot of this nonsense.

Microsoft is trying to stampede everyone to Windows 11 because not only is its adoption rate still lagging behind, at less than 50% market share, there's recent data indicating that a not-insignificant number of users are switching back to Windows 10 if they can. According to some sources, Win11's market share went from 43.2% in May of this year to 53.5% in July -- then suddenly dropped 4.5% between July and August, while Windows 10 went from 53.2% down to 42.8%, then back up to 45.5% in the same period. And Windows 7, after declining pretty steadily over the past year or so from 3% down to 2%, suddenly surged back up to 3.6% between July and August! So, there's definitely a not-insignificant slice of the user base that is rejecting Win11...

Ah good, you posted the link.

It's also possible to get it for free (through that link) with a Windows Account Backup, or 1000 (I think) points from using Bing. Which I have accumulated through my... generative experiments.

Now I just need to get all my machines on the program.

And yeah, I have an Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Slate that's still running Win7 and seems okay, but I don't let it play online.

"Not supported" doesn't mean things explode, it just means nothing will be updated or patched, for bugs or security issues. Over time, it also means potentially things will drift out of synch with the technology being used in other stuff, but on the casual desktop user scale that often takes years and years. Second, Microsoft always releases OS's in an alternating fashion: every OTHER one is an actual OS, and the ones inbetween are betas, experiments, etc. 11 is in the "beta" groove. Windows 8 was as well, and I never touched it: Just stayed on 7 until people had figured out how to make 10 usable, and I fully intend to stay here till 12 comes out.

And as others have said, if Microsoft is crap and "discontinues" something, you can often get an archived copy and install it anyway. For some godforsaken reason reason MS discontinued the photoviewer from 7 in 10, absolutely mindboggling. I guess to force everyone to use their terrible store. I just got an installer and an happily using it on 10 anyway. You can probably do the same if you end up missing any software/utilities. The notepad.exe from windows 3.1 still works on modern windows (though it's probably better to use one a LITTLE newer so it has unicode support).

As someone who has both a Windows 10 machine (my backup machine) and a Win11 machine, I am little worried about the transition. As was said by others, Win10 is not going to suddenly up and die because of its' end of support date. At worst it will nag at you. Thus far, my Win10 machine has occasionally nagged me about it, but the hardware it's on isn't "secure enough" for Win11. I'm for the most part utterly unbothered by this.

I would say that the Win11 stuff one might not want can be turned off and/or shut down with little or no impact to the running of the machine, and there exist multiple tutorials of varying sorts to be found across YouTube and other sites on the internet how to do so with minimal issue and interference.

As to the issue of replacing Paint3D, I can offer little advice as I have never used it, instead having a now-ancient (and significantly cracked, hacked, and yo-ho-ho'd) copy of Adobe Photoshop before they went over to being a subscription service. For all else, I find I need incredibly little. I have gotten by happily with a copy of LibreOffice (a free download) and for anything needing me to look into the guts of something as text Notepad++.

It has been mentioned prior by others, and I strongly second this, that you utilize Mozilla Firefox and uBlock Origins (as an ad blocker), as they serve exceedingly well. The built-in Windows Defender antivirus is, all things considered, more than decent for all else.

I can give you no better advice beyond the above.

You can continue using Win 10 for a while, though the longer you go, the more risky it could potentially become. If you take that machine offline you can keep using it indefinitely! The updates are just for compatibility and security when your computer touches the Outside World. It will keep working as long as its hardware continues to function. I've thought about taking mine offline and using is as an art prep station, then transporting files to another currently-updated machine (Chromebook maybe) to post them.
If you know Photoshop, you can use GIMP. The menu structure is a little different, so you'll have to re-learn where everything is, but the way the tools work is all very, very similar.

The deadline simply state that Windows 10 will stop offering *Free* updates.

I heard that if you pay about 30-60 , you'll still be able to get Windows 10 updates for another year.

I was still using windows XP untill windows 10 came out and my hard drive failed, so you can keep using windows 10 for years, probably untill windows 12 comes out (which will hopefully have no more spyware harvesting your personal data for microsoft to sell, or train their AI with.) A good antivirus should keep you safe in the meantime as long as you don't go licking the darkweb or browse porn sites, you know the regualer precautions online.

Yeah, places like FurAffinity, DevientArt and the like.

adblocker also helps ofcourse to stop popups and malicious ads.

Which is why I have UBlock installed, the paid version.

untill windows 12 comes out (which will hopefully have no more spyware harvesting your personal data for microsoft to sell, or train their AI with.
Dream on! Microsoft is only going to tighten the screws on harvesting user data and taking control away from the end users, handing it to their advertisers. It's their only profit model.

Don't worry, I'm still using Windows 7.

I somehow doubt that Win10 will explode the day after - it'll be fine

After 2 years as my daily driver, I have found Windows 11 to be a downgrade from Windows 10 in the same way that Windows 10 was a downgrade from Windows 7 - most effort is spent trying to claw back the control and functionality available in previous versions. Once built-in basic functionality has been offloaded to plug-ins which have to be downloaded from their app store or ad-infested SAAS that requires a constant internet connection to use. Although a relatively minor annoyance by some standards, one of the most galling examples for me: Windows 11's File Explorer doesn't provide a count of files when using Group By display anymore. Also, when selecting files in File Explorer, Windows stops providing the count and filesize of your selection after 99 files.

I highly recommend a piece of software called Winaero Tweaker which provides a single, organized way to access all the configuration settings in the OS, including the ones Microsoft has deliberately hidden from the user. It helps uproot all the AI cruft as well.

I used to be a Photoshop devotee, until Adobe turned into pure, concentrated evil. I've been using Krita for years, and I LOVE it. It's really easy, and there are vast amounts of online help and videos if anything is confusing. The brush engine is superior to Photoshop. It has great layout tools for comics. The text tool is weak, but there's a major upgrade in the pipeline. It works well enough for basic lettering in different typefaces. Krita also lacks built-in scanner support, but I have external tools for that.

I've tried using GiMP multiple times and been frustrated, aggravated and irritated beyond tolerance, so I wouldn't recommend that to anybody for painting or drawing. I hate how setup works (getting a tablet working with GiMP can utterly defeat people who compile operating systems from scratch for fun). I hate how the brushes work. I hate how layer compositing works. I hate going between mouse and tablet. I filed a bug report on the broken layer compositing in GiMP and I was told "that's by design." I might allow that it COULD be used for photo editing—MAYBE. For a masochist.

As for whether your computer will "die" without Microsoft supporting it, don't worry about that. I used Windows 7 for YEARS after Microsoft officially stopped supporting it. The ONLY reason I switched is because some of my favorite software stopped allowing upgrades on it, forcing me to be stuck several versions behind. (there were also hard drive formatting issues involving a change in the way disk partitions are organized that are too technical for you to need to worry about) I'm currently using Windows 10, and plan to continue doing so until my favorite software won't run on it (which will be many years after the official end of life). Just don't open Email attachments from anybody you don't know, and you'll be fine on Windows 10 even without any updates.

I could pay $61 to continue updates through next year. The fee doubles on the following year. Another option is to have my CAP unit IT officer update my laptop to Windows 11 without charge. The catch being that I would have to leave it behind with passkeys/passwords until he happens to attend a meeting, since he works out-of-town. As I use my Dell Latitude 7480 to view photos and edit video--that is not an option.

On another note, USB sticks are not secure storage media. I have already “lost” files this way. They simply could no longer be opened.

Do not let it be connected to the internet until AFTER the initialization, otherwise you will not own your data.
Bypassing Windows 11 Sign-In: Local Account Tricks (24H2 Setup)

Secondly, your old machine will not cease working, it just won't be getting updates.
And unless you're really sloppy about clicking unknown links or attachments via the email, you're 99.999% secure.