When speaking of text editors, notepad or wordpad under windows are far less powerful than both emacs and vim (VI iMproved). If you are not satisfied with default windows editors you can always download a free version of UltraEdit. On the other hand, while windows based text editors do not stack up to their UNIX counterparts, you are not restricted to editing your files using generic text editors (unlike in UNIX). For example, if you want to write C++ code, MS Visual Studio will provide an extremely powerful interface, with command completion, workspace organization, etc... S-Plus 2000, the PC version of Splus, also provides a very powerful engine for writing and organizing S (arguable more powerful than emacs), combined with ability to immediately view graphics and modify them on the fly.
If you do decide to use S-plus under UNIX, basics about emacs is absolutely necessary. If you are new to emacs, emacs' online tutorial is a very good one. Just start emacs and choose help -> Emacs tutorial and you are on the way.
After a while, your mind will be filled with strange key combinations and start feeling frustrated. You have two ways to get out. The first one is keep a emacs referene card http://www.refcards.com at hand. It will take a while before you get familiar with these keys but you will have no problem start using emacs. The other way is to let emacs work in the way you want by changing these key-bindings.
This sounds like a terrifying job, but it is not. If you familiar to windows key bindings such as Ctrl-X (cut), Ctrl-C (copy), Ctrl-V (paste), Ctrl-Z (undo), shift-arrow select etc, you can have them in emacs. All you need to do is add the following line to your .emacs file:
(load "/home/helpdesk/trial/cua/cua")You can define other windows keys like F1, F2 etc. Please refer to the dot file repository for sample .emacs.
(CUA-mode t)
If you are familiar with vi, you have no reason to be afraid of vim. Vim is a fully compatible, greatly enhanced vi. The best improvement is that you can move around with your arrow keys in insert mode. With a little configuration (refer to .vimrc file in dotfile repository), you can have syntax awareness color editing for almost all type of files, super easy find and replace and much more.
There are other editors like nedit, jed but they are not available on stat network.