It is a fair comparison.

If you edit the same 1KB file on each computer side by side the 30 year old computer will be more responsive than the modern one.

That's what people are taking issue with.

Heh, I've not any one talk about AV and things like the smart screen filter.

A huge number of security related things are going on.

Also windows logs a ton of telemetry these days.

I think the stock Notepad in Windows 10 is perfectly fine and speedy at least, I've never considered it too slow unless I open a huge file with word wrapping on.

Notepad2 is my all-time favorite though. It supports key features like line numbers and directionless search, but is much closer to stock than Notepad++. [0]

[0] https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

64KB.

Notepad on NT4 could edit files as large as you had memory. I never used 3.5 but I guess they must have made that change in NT4.