Given that I assume NOTEPAD.EXE is still basically a window containing an optional status bar and a multiline edit control with a custom WNDPROC for managing features like word wrap, I'm actually curious why it opens with such a large private working set, even on Windows 11.

Possibly space for data allocated by one of the 50+ DLLs it loads directly or indirectly to support features like Unicode text input and rendering.

Actually, it gets much worse. By default, recent Windows 11 versions use a completely new version of Notepad with support for things like tabs, styled text, and AI (!).

Even with all the new features disabled, this one has a 32 MB private working set before opening a single file.

Amusingly, GNU Emacs, a.k.a. Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping at a time when entry-level UNIX workstations actually shipped with as little as 4 MB RAM, opens on the same machine with a smaller (25 MB) private working set than the new Notepad.

To be fair to at least one team at Microsoft, the EDIT.EXE text-mode editor recently added to Windows 11, with a user interface that somehow manages to be more consistent with basic Windows UI conventions than many modern Windows GUI apps despite not being a GUI app at all, opens with a private working set size of only 520 kB.