The latest round of Windows 11 updates has finally delivered Notepad in its finest form, as arguably now the best, most reliable offline word processor around. It's always been a handy li'l app, sitting in your Windows installation waiting patiently for that time when you might need to quickly edit a text or system file. But, as a straight word processor, it's been a little lacking, with its younger sibling WordPad getting more tippytappy keyboard attention.
But now WordPad has gone the way of Clippy, Notepad is the only game in town on a fresh Windows installation. And Microsoft has actually been making it better and better in recent years. The ability to tab, and for the app to essentially remember each of them from one boot to the next, has made it such a useful thing for me. The tabbed functionality arrived last year, and prior to that word wrapping and the improved find/replace dialog was introduced. And now we are finally getting a spell check, too.
