Notepad has been around forever. I use it mostly to clean text that I copy from the web or from Word documents, or as a temporary place to save notes, passwords and pieces of code. If I need to do some serious editing or coding, I use Notepad++.

It turns out you can use Notepad as a basic logbook. And here’s how:

1. Open Notepad or a new Notepad file.
2. Type .LOG (use uppercase) in the first line of the file. Press Enter and go to a new line.
3. Save the file. Close the file.
4. Re-open the file and watch the magic: Notepad adds the current date and time to the end of the file and places the cursor on the line after, so you can start your entry right away.
5. Type your comments, save and close the file.
6. Every time you open the file, the current time and date will be added to the end of the file and the cursor will just wait there for you.