This post made me thinking what can you do to make Visual Web Developer to behave like Visual Notepad :-). Here is what you can do to switch off certain features and make startup time shorter and editor more responsive.

1. Hide properties window

2. Hide toolbox

3. Disable automatic addition of ID attribute (intrinsic elements only)
    Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | Miscellaneous - uncheck Auto ID elements on Paste in Source view'

4. Disable event dropdowns
    Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | General - uncheck 'Navigation bar'.

5. Disable idle time validation
    Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | Validation - uncheck 'Show errors'.

6. Switch off insertion of the closing tag
    Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | Format - uncheck 'Auto insert closing tag'.

7. Disable autocompletion
    Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | General - uncheck 'Autolist members' and 'Parameter information'.

More radical changes:

1. Open ASPX and other Web form files as static HTML pages. You will lose server code intellisense in the Web Form and statement completion and validation of  ASP.NET controls won't work.
    Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | Extensions and assign whatever extensions you want to the HTML Editor. Alternatively, right-click on the file in the Solution Explore, choose Open With... and select HTML  Editor and click 'Set as Default'.

2. Open HTML pages as well as ASP, ASPX, etc as plain text. The only feature that will be available is colorization of the markup.
    Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | Extensions and assign whatever extensions you want to the text editor. Alternatively, right-click on the file in the Solution Explore, choose Open With... and select Source Text Editor and click 'Set as Default'.