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When you write — and do nothing else but write — on your computer, what software do you like to use? Let me/us know please… just doing an informal survey.

Here are my two personal preferences.

When working on my Windows laptop (as opposed to my NEO), interestingly enough, I forsake the installed Microsoft Word or even the Microsoft Works Word Processor. Too many features and technically bloated, I think, which do nothing but get in the way of the actual job of writing.

Instead, of late I’ve found myself using something I’ve been familiar with for years… good old Microsoft WordPad. As far as I know, it comes with every Windows installation, so if you’ve got a WinPC, you have it. It’s always been a good and reliable emergency standby no frills word processor, but I’ve only started relying on it as pretty much my main PC writing tool since Vista’s release.

I can credit blogging for getting me reacquainted with WordPad. For who knows how long, I’ve habitually used a plain text editor (see below) to write with — talk about guaranteeing that your document files will work with everything out there, whatever the platform. And text editors are OK for blogging… but WordPad’s ability to use fonts and text styles (bold, italics, etc.) make it just that bit more convenient for offline blog writing. WordPad being what it is, it’s gradually worked its way into my using it for writing other stuff besides blogs.

WordPad wishlist: the ability to embed live URL links. Its absence is probably the only thing keeping me from calling it the utlimate no-frills blogging word processor.

As for writing with a plain text editor, I still do that. NotePad’s OK and adequate, but it’s a bit too much in the no-frills end of the spectrum to be very useful for nothing more than the most basic tasks… the extra (and boy, do I mean extra) features provided by more robust text editors like TextPad put them squarely into the “excellent must-have tools for writers” category, at least in my book.

Now, I don’t know if TextPad is still the best text editor around, which is what I’ve been claiming for years since I discovered it during my Dirtsmart Netpreneur days. But it’s obviously done well for itself, considering that it’s basically shareware and still around after all these years, and there are old-timers like me who’re so familiar and comfortable with it, we’re absolutely positively not curious about any other text editors out there.

So, those are my choices. And yours are… ?

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