Notepad was released in the mid ‘80s and has changed very little over time. In essence, it is a barebone text editor that’s pretty outdated. Comparatively, Notepad++ was created in 2003 and is much more sophisticated. Aside from the already mentioned autosave, it has useful features such as split-screen and line operations and support for 140+ plugins. While Notepad only lets you save files in .txt format, its younger brother lets you choose from 26 other extensions. In short, Notepad++ marks a huge upgrade in every way.