I would definately agree with Activestate's perl binary. I would also recommend trying out Textpad, a free graphical editor. You can configure buttons to run perl or virtually any other executable, and has document tabs; very useful when you have scripts and errorlogs open.
And I'd like to point out that TextPad is *not* free. Unless you are talking about something other than the one at www.textpad.com. A single user licence costs 27 US dollars.