metapad3.6

metapad is a lightweight and portable word processor with an interface and options similar to Microsoft's default Notepad. However, it comes packed with additional options that aim to help users with their text editing activity overall, including source code editing.

Portability advantages

Since there is no setup pack involved, you can drop the executable file in any part of the hard disk and just click it to run.Another possibility is to save metapad to a USB flash disk or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any PC with minimum effort and no previous installers.An important aspect to take into account is that the Windows registry and Start menu do not get updated with new entries, and no extra files are created on the HDD without your consent, leaving it clean after removal.

Familiar interface and handy options

As previously mentioned, metapad's GUI resembles the one of Notepad. It is possible to undo and redo actions for an unlimited number of steps, indent and unindent blocks, convert text selections to lowercase or uppercase (or invert the case), as well as to insert date and time stamps, along with external files (text, HTML, source code).metapad lets users use a search function and replace all keywords in the whole file or just current selection, create favorites, specify a primary and secondary external viewer, and more.

Evaluation and conclusion

The tool is undemanding when it comes to CPU and RAM, so it does not affect the overall performance of the computer. We have not come across any issues throughout our evaluation, since it did not hang, crash or pop up error dialogs.All in all, metapad comes bundled with some pretty handy options when it comes to source code editing and day-to-day word processing.