Building a Better Notepad with Notepad2.exe
I had to add this one since it's making the rounds. The official site for Notepad2 has this to say:
The original Notepad shipped with Windows is probably the handiest program of all times, small, fast, without frills! Notepad2 tries to follow this principle, it's a small, fast and free text editor with syntax highlighting for HTML and other common languages.
https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Omar likes it enough he posted instructions for how you can actually replace the windows notepad.exe with this here:
https://blogs.msdn.com/omars/archive/2004/04/30/124093.aspx
He also adds his comments:
Notepad2 is a FANTASTIC app, has a toolbar with buttons ;-), looks like it belongs on XP and is free! You can even set the window to be transparent. It's got a ton of awesome features.