If Notepad understood Unix newline characters, I'd have no complaints.
Microsoft justifies this by saying "Notepad is for notes" (in the same way that a Stickies dashboard widget is.) That is, Notepad is "Microsoft OneNote Extra-Lite," in the same way that Wordpad is "Microsoft Word Extra-Lite." Hackers think Notepad is actually "Visual Studio Extra-Lite," but it's not, and it's not trying to be. I think everyone would be happier with debugging and automating a default Windows install if Microsoft just shipped a SciTE-like accessory separately from Notepad, and defaulted .ini files and such to opening in it.
As of Win7, calc is drastically different.
Another feature that was finally updated in Win7 was the "Add Font" interface, which as late as Vista was still using the Win3.1 UI: http://www.imgur.com/lGSIA.png