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Picasa's flow is still the best quick-edit system I've used. I am comfortable with Lightroom & Photoshop, and they're great tools. But Picasa did a stellar job of balancing simple/lightweight/fast/useful in a manner I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.

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I'm glad somebody said this. I totally agree. I still use the Picasa desktop software. It's brilliant for picking out best pics and tweaking them. The web interface just doesn't compare.

When they announced that the desktop software was going away, I immediately downloaded the final version and archived it away. More than likely I will use it until Windows no longer supports it... unless someone "makes a better Picasa".

It probably has only gotten more responsive by virtue of being made to run fast on hardware from the early 2000s

You're not wrong. I'll be genuinely sad when Windows eventually drops whatever API support allows it to keep running without emulation.

Microsoft is famously unwilling to let software stop working. Picasa will probably work forever.

Dropping Win16 was a bad sign. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... talks about the back compat faction losing power at Microsoft.

Interesting read. A lot has changed in the almost 15 years since he published it. Has he done any followups?

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