TinyPad

In the world of Notepad replacements, Tiny Pad gives users some solid basic features and a couple of unique ones, too. It incorporates a tabbed interface for juggling multiple notepads, it can load on Windows start-up, and it comes with a thorough set of hot keys for keeping your hands on the keyboard.

It also boasts a hot corners feature. It's on by default, so if the program's running but not the top window, moving your mouse to either the top-left or top-right corner will bring Tiny Pad to the front. Impressively, it will auto-save your notes, and comes with an archiving feature. You can still save notes separately to your hard drive, but the archive lets you keep them all in Tiny Pad--just out of sight. There are some concerns about making this data portable, but it's a good feature nonetheless. The toolbar can be hidden, a nice plus that mostly makes up for the Mac theme on this Windows program.

Tiny Pad lacks hooks into Windows' default Notepad, and isn't as robust as some of the Notepad replacements designed for programmers. The installer is a ZIP, which adds an extraction step that this program shouldn't have. The installer package itself clocks in at around 4MB, but used a surprisingly large amount of RAM--nearly 30MB when running with two tabs. This didn't affect the program's performance, but was larger than expected given the program's name. Size isn't everything, though, and Tiny Pad's features make it an appealing alternative worth checking out.