Lightweight development environment

Yesterday my deskptop crashed again (ok, it is not a unusual thing to happen), and now I am stuck with a old notebook (P233MMX with 64MB and Windows ME).
I know that I cannot expect something really amazing from it, but we do not have a lightweight development environment. In that notebook I cannot expect something more complex than a notepad.
It is obvious that I will not be able to use something complex like Eclipse IDE, but most of time we do not need something like that. How much time do you spend waiting for plugin loading, or any other nice stuff that you never use.
I tried some light source code editor, but nothing really amazing, what you normally get from then is a code highlight. In my opinion what we need in these kind of situation, and in almost all the other situations, is something simple that can integrate easially with external tools (that will make the dirt work when you need it).
Let's agree that features like code refactoring, code highlight, online error report, auto compilation, etc are nice and really usefull, but we get to much used to it. Beliave me that it is difficult to work in a simple source code editor, sometimes it is important to come back to something simpler and recicle our base knowledge.
Remember: without a good base we cannot make a building that reach the sky.
For me as a homework: try to find tools for a lightweight development environment (advogates of JEdit, VI, Emacs, etc can post comments about their advantages).