It takes a few seconds to start up for me too. And if it's already running, unrelated tabs appearing are annoying. I use Sublime usually, but Notepad2 when I just want to edit something quickly or have a scratch pad. (I actually replaced Windows' notepad with it.)

ST2 takes 8 seconds for me to start on my laptop. Notepad++ starts in 0.5.

Using ST3b3059 on Windows 8.1 pro x64, 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM Platter and the ST console logs "startup time: 0.0931221", it loaded as fast as vanilla Notepad.

There was a massive performance boost for startup for ST3. ST2 startup is slow.

That might explain the difference in opinion perhaps.