Notepad++

This software retains the ease of use of notepad but adds powerful features to it, thus resulting in a very useful combination. It is an open source software with lot of user friendly features. It has auto completion, syntax highlighting and folding. A very interesting feature is the multi view and multi document ability where you can edit two documents at the same time, or even edit the same document at two different places. It also has indent and brace guideline and one can zoom in and zoom out of the text for better readability. The views could be changed dynamically, and rotated if required. You can also save shortcuts for macros.