Notepad is pretty basic. There are several better text editors out there. Below is a short list.

Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

Textpad (trial, free if you don't mind the reminders)
http://www.textpad.com/

Vim
http://www.vim.org/

others can be found at download.com or sourceforge.net


Now to add your new text editor to the right-click menu for various file types: (if you want to add it for all files types, follow these steps for the '*' folder ( HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/* ) ).
http://www.jfitz.com/tips/rclick_custom.html

abbreviated instructions:

  1. open regedit.exe
  2. Open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT "folder"
  3. go to the extension you want to modify (use * for all)
  4. right click on the shell key or create it if its not there
  5. create a new key for your command to create
  6. create a new key below that called command and enter the path to the exe without quotes and add "%1" with quotes to the end, so it looks like
    C:\Program Files\Notepad2\Notepad2.exe "%1"


And then to use your new text editor in IE's View Source feature, see my other post.
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