The main benefit of this as I see it - moving between windows (in the emacs sense of the word) - can be got by installing windmove.el ( <a href="http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WindMove" rel="nofollow">http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WindMove</a> ). Once you've got it it's hard to go without (actually the author of this piece used windmove too!). Another indespensible tool is winner-mode ( <a href="http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WinnerMode" rel="nofollow">http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WinnerMode</a> ) which remembers emacs window layouts and allows you to "undo" window changes.