I've been using Textpad for plaintext on Windows for 5 years. :) Nothing compares (though it still has its minor quirks). At one point I also had LF-only as my default save method (Nearly 100% of all my initial text files were from the Amiga and unix).

I'm using cygwin right now to play around with - you can use its shell to just move around and work on your windows files if you like. I'm also using gcc, but without a cross-compiler.

Bruno