NotePro 3.78

Founded back in ’99, Crystal Office Systems is a company that specializes in the development of award-winning applications that are “feature rich, designed with power and functionality in mind, yet presented in an easy-to-use graphical interface to support power users and novices alike.” The software applications developed by Crystal Office Systems are meant to work on the Microsoft-developed Windows operating system – this includes XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Mobile.

One software application Crystal Office Systems has come up with is NotePro, an application that weighs in at some 8MB and will work with pretty much all versions of the Windows operating system (just like all of Crystal Office Systems’ applications do).

Think of NotePro as Microsoft’s Notepad on steroids. If Notepad provides support for txt files only, NotePro also provides support for .doc, .wri, .rtf. and .html files. Notepad lets you insert the time and date; NotePro lets you insert the date, the time, and the time and date. Here are some other bits and pieces that are not included in Notepad and are included in NotePro:
- The option to preview whatever you want to print. In notepad you can “Print”, you cannot “Print Preview”.
- Add various styles to your text.
- Full Screen Mode.
- View document properties.
- Spell checker to ensure you did not spell words incorrectly.
- The option to insert objects or pictures.
- The option to minimize the application to the System Tray.
- Bookmarks.
- Customizable tabs.
- Tables.
- Wrap to ruler.
- Trim.
- Built-in calculator.

Notepad is not exactly free – you pay for the Windows operating system, and Notepad is one of the utilities included in the operating system. NotePro isn’t free either. You can use it free of charge, but only for a period of 30 days. Once that time is up, you have to pay to keep using the application. When money comes into the equation, you immediately think of another text editor – Microsoft Word – not Microsoft Notepad. And once you think of Word you think of Office – and then you think of OpenOffice.org, the free alternative to MS Office. And that’s when you realize that instead of paying money for NotePro, you could get OpenOffice.org instead.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Much more features than Microsoft Notepad

Cons

• Free to use only during the 30-day trial
• Trial version doesn’t let you insert objects and pictures and doesn’t let you print
• Nag screen
• There are alternative text editors out there that do not cost money (like Writer in OpenOffice.org)

NotePro has been reviewed by George Norman on 29 Apr 2010. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated NotePro 4 out of 5 stars, naming it Excellent