Entropy

Notepad2 is a notepad.exe replacement for Windows; with a whole lot more features. The key here is that its still very much a notepad - no huge memory usage, no long loading time, and its simple to use.

“Get code syntax highlighting, regular expression search, better text selection options, and support for Unix and Mac-created text files in Notepad2, which can run standalone from a thumb drive. You can even replace Windows Notepad entirely with Notepad2, though it takes a few steps—here’s a tutorial on how for XP users, and one for Vista users.” Read on at LifeHacker ..

Image from Wikipedia

There are a lot of reasons to run a slim Windows install; using less space because you only need the essentials for VMWare Fusion as LifeHacker suggests - perhaps performance reasons. But either way, LifeHacker has a great guide on doing it with nLite; GameXP and more.

That means that the virtual machine will run more quickly and take up fewer resources on my Mac.

On the other hand, a lightweight Windows install is also perfect for older hardware that just can’t keep up with XP. In fact, your hardware doesn’t even have to be that bad to still enjoy benefits of this process. A slimmed down Windows install is also appealing for the performance gains it affords, because it allows your computer to allocate more memory and resources to individual programs rather than the operating system as a whole.

Read more at LifeHacker.