G'Day Paul,
I'm with 33South... I've grown up using Notepad. But like you I've tried and am still trying to come to grips with more up-market software. I tried Hot Dog from Sausage software years ago, but never got the hang of it... also played with Adobe Pagemill with very limited success. I've also tried Word, etc but found them clumsy to do what I want to do.
I am currently learning to drive Frontpage (because I have it) and I think I can live with that. I have always been very keen on simple html with minimal overheads so my pages load quickly even on slow connections, so I've always been critical of packages that blow out file sizes...
Anyway I'll be interested to learn if you find a simple package that's easy and flexible to drive! Having learn't with Notepad, sometimes I find it amazing how difficult it is to find a purpose build package that suits me... I think it's a bit like touch typing versus two finger rapid fire. I can't get the hang of touch typing either, because its quicker and easier to hammer away the way I always have...
Al.