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It’s time for another installment of Palm Discovery’s wReview Wednesday!

Today, I’ll be reviewing a Symbian S60 software program called LightNotepad by Petri Kultanen. This program is very much a basic notepad application (hence the name) that supports searching within a post entry, limited viewing customization, ASCII and Unicode format, bookmarks and a few others.

As much as the Nokia E71 smartphone is a great smartphone that can do a lot, it’s not perfect. Take a notepad app for example. Although the Nokia E71 does come with Notes and Active Notes, they are somewhat lacking in some features that I need and want, especially since I’m a blogger. I personally need a notepad app that will at least allow me to compose my blog posts without being bogged down with very limited features and capabilities. Mind you, I’m not looking for a fully featured notepad app, I’m just looking for something that will allow me to do a little more than just typing a block of text in.

I’d like to be able to at least look for a specific search term in the notepad entry so that I can at least track certain words, letters or characters down. The Notes and Active notes app don’t offer that as they are both somewhat focused on integrating with the Contacts. I want a simple notepad app that will at least allow me to search a post entry for a specific term.

After looking for and trying a few, I think I’ve found one that is relatively small and simple to use and does what I want. And that is LightNotepad

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For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

LightNotepad, as the name suggests, is a light notepad application for the Symbian S60 platform devices. Although it is a “light” version app, it still offers a little more features than what’s found on the Notes and Active Notes app found on the Nokia E71 smartphone and others. First of all, the app supported ASCII and Unicode format, something that many programmers and web designers would like to work in. This allows easy saving in a standard text format something that neither Notes and Active Notes support. That means, that the text saved in LightNotepad will be and can be transferred and opened on any Windows computer, thus saving a lot of hassles. Second, the program offers basic search within the program so that I can easily look for a specific search term. Neither Notes nor Active Notes offers this feature. Third, the program allows several font sizes for the text display so that you can opt to have it in small fonts to maximize the space or have it larger fonts to view it without squinting. Fourth, you can copy and paste within the application with the Ctrl keys on your device. Fifth, you can save and load the file either from the phone’s memory or from a memory card. Sixth, the program supports screen orientation (landscape or portrait) if your device supports it. And seventh, the program also supports one bookmark for file. Most of these features except the copy and paste is not found on the default Notes and Active Notes application.

Plus, what I really like and enjoy about LightNotepad is that the background of the app is in white, unlike blue or whatever else background you’d find on the default Notes and Active Notes app. I dislike those colors and prefer white for better viewing.

Slideshow of LightNotepad

Here are my observations:

I Liked:

Ease of use

The program is very easy and straightforward. Once you open the app, you can start using it. It’s a notepad app so there’s little need to read a manual to figure out what to do.

Landscape and Portrait viewing support

The program supports and toggles between landscape and portrait modes (if your device supports it. ie. E66). This can help when reading notes that may be optimized either in landscape or portrait.

Search supported

Especially for programmers and website designers, having a search feature can be very helpful and handy when editing or debugging. It would be helpful if it supported wildcards but then I’m asking for too much.

Bookmark feature

The program can support one bookmark in a file so again, this can help pinpoint a specific area in the text file for quick accessibility.

Supports ASCII and Unicode

The program which I think stands out is its support for ASCII and Unicode which makes for easy transfer and viewing on a computer. Thus, you can easily make changes on either the smartphone or the computer and transfer it back and forth.

Several viewing font sizes available

The program offers you four different font sizes to choose from: Very small, Small, Normal, Big so you can decide and balance between viewability and space availability.

Free

What can you say? I love free.

I Didn’t Like:

UTF8 format not supported

Although the program supports ASCII and Unicode, I am surprised that it doesn’t support UTF8 which a lot of text files now are saved in. It would be nice if the program supported UTF8 however.

Max size of 200k

The program allows a maximum file size of 200k. This limit may prove to be a hindrance for some as it’s a relatively small size when dealing with programming but then, we are talking about a “light” notepad app and it’s supposed to be in text, so it’s not expected that an entire book would be saved on the notepad app.

No Search and Replace

Although there is a “search” or “find” feature in the program, I would really LOVE to have a search and replace feature which could be extremely useful for editing drafts of my blog posts and other uses.

Review Summary

LightNotepad is a somewhat basic and “light” notepad program for the Symbian S60 platform that may be a great replacement for the default Notes and Active Notes app found on the Nokia smartphones. As the program supports ASCII and Unicode format, this makes for easy transfer of the file back and forth between smartphone and computer. Plus the search feature can be very helpful. At an excellent price of FREE, you may find that this program may turn out to be a replacement for the Notes app in your Nokia smartphone. Why not check out LightNotepad and tell me what you think.

Enjoyed this review? Check out the many other Palm Discovery software reviews here such as palm os software review, windows-mobile software review, symbian os software review, iPhone and ipod touch software review.

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