The Verge at Work is a series about process. We're not scientists, and we're not gurus, we're just trying to get some work done. The solutions presented here are highly personal, and highly personalized. Not the only way, but our way.

I've always had a strange love of the default note taking application of an operating system. Notepad on Windows, SimpleText and TextEdit on Mac. I even used the Notes app on my iPhone. There was a security there, knowing that once we get back to plain text everything is going to be all right, and that something solid enough to ship with an OS would never eat my file. Things could get screwy in Word, or QuarkXPress, or Dreamweaver, but my plain text editor would set things straight. I always experimented with feature-rich text editors like UltraEdit and Taco HTML Edit, with tabbed document editing and web development aids, but it only felt like a fling: I'd be back to the OS default eventually.