The best free editor on Windows

Nice editor. A little bit slow with large docs but does a good job.

I currently use PortableNotepad++

So far on windows this is the best simple text editor, free or otherwise that I have found.

I have used, notepad, notepad2, e editor, wordpad, etc etc.

The regex search and replace is reasonable (though not perfect).
Memory footprint is great.
Multiple tabs.
Syntax highlighting very useful.
Compare tool is ok, not great.

Only real complaint is the customizeable syntax highlighting isn't as easy as it should be.

Genuine mtness style for notepad++ available here:
http://mtness.net/style/nppp/

small memory footprint, fast start up time, and decent file-type detection with syntax highlighting. One of the better free editors out there.