You can get this behavior if you launch Vim as `evim` or by setting the 'insertmode' option in your .vimrc. It's important to understand, though, that there are

You can get this behavior if you launch Vim as `evim` or by setting the 'insertmode' option in your .vimrc. It's important to understand, though, that there are very good reasons why this is not the default. This might be reasonable for the sort of user who only starts up Vim on rare occasions, say when editing a remote file via SSH, and doesn't care to grok the modal style. It would certainly reduce (though not eliminate) confusion for people who encounter Vim for the first time with no prior knowledge, see a strange screen with tildes running down the left side, and spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to quit, only to give up and just kill the process manually. But crucially, it defeats the _entire purpose_ of using Vim for the non-casual user. `i` is the command that turns Vim into little more than MS Notepad with syntax highlighting; it strips away 95% of Vim's power. If you make insert mode your default, then there's really no reason to be using Vim at all. Vim is the type of application that expends very little effort coddling new users and instead focuses on being as flexible and powerful as possible for the veteran. That means its reputation for being difficult to learn is not entirely undeserved, but the majority of users who do surmount the learning curve grow to appreciate Vim for its peculiar style, in spite of the initial difficulty it brings. The other problem with the 'insertmode' option, of course, is that the sort of user who would want to do such a thing is the least likely sort to know that such an option exists or how to activate it.