Yep, I agree. Notepad should be (and is) the simplest possible GUI text editor. All the devs that I know use either Notepad2 or Notepad++ for more complex general-purpose editing.
I am still using TextPad which I started using since 90s. But wish I could jump to something better. TextPad is now dead with no update for, what 6 years? No v.5 doesn't count as update, it's downgrade. No Unicode, only more fancy GUI.
Just my experience:
I have been using textpad for ages, and I am still using it (v.4.7, for the reasons you mentioned). In the meantime, however, I had to learn emacs (for Slime etc.). Now I notice that when I open textpad I begin to miss emacs features. And on emacs, I miss the fancy GUI far less than I imagined.
