The xPad notepad is the best of both worlds. It has a TextEdit interface that is unobtrusive and that opens as quickly as stickies, yet it allows you to organize your notes by titling them, assigning a user-defined colour-coded subject to them, and providing a sortable index of them. If you're a student, a writer, or anyone who grabs snippets of info or quotes from the web, you will love this. It also makes a great scratch pad for jotting down ideas when they come to you so you can place them in their proper file/directory later. Or you can save it as a repository for all notes for which you need a quick reference. For instance, I have one note that shows keyboard shortcuts and quick tips for OS X (things I would otherwise forget, like how to access the menu without the mouse), another note keeps track of my contest entries.

• The database of all your notes is stored in your home Library/Application Support, which makes backup easy.
• Another bonus is that you can give each note a distinct appearance by choosing fonts, font colours & sizes, highlighting, paragraph formatting, etc., just as you would in TextEdit.
• A brilliant and most convenient feature is the "Copy Ruler" and "Paste Ruler" in the Text menu, which allows you to easily copy paragraph formatting (indents, tab stops, spacing, etc.) to other areas.

However, I'd welcome the following in future updates:

1. search and find across all notes and note titles.
2. automatic bullets and numbering.
3. ability to sort note titles in any order by dragging and dropping in the title drawer (a good alternative to hierarchical notes).
4. hierarchical notes (just 2 levels) but only if custom sorting (above), which I prefer, can't be implemented - an expandable triangle next to main notes in the title drawer; anything the user designates as a sub-note to a main note would appear underneath it (e.g., user can create a main note named "Contests" and sub-notes named "Publishers Clearing House" and "Lottery" under it)

However, the last three are just "wish list items" that I would only like to see IF they don't add to the current free price and IF they don't bloat or slow down the app. xPad as it is now is pretty darn near perfect. Many compliments to the developer for a job well done.