If you often need to work with structured text such as HTML or source code, look at Notepad2. It sits comfortably in the Goldilocks zone between "too much" and "too little" functionality. Although it doesn't support tabs, it does have a lot of useful features for working with an opened file, including flexible syntax highlighting, encoding conversion, block formatting (for coders, indent or 'outdent' blocks of code), case conversion, and more. As a standalone .exe of under 700 KB, it is also a good choice to put on a USB drive or small netbook.

--Ian Harac