Remember what I said in the preceding hour, when I introduced the emacs editor: emacs is modeless, so be prepared for an editor that is quite unlike vi. And because it's modeless, there's no insert or command mode. The result is that you have ample opportunity to use the Control key.
Over the years, I have tried to become an emacs enthusiast, once even forcing myself to use it for an entire month. I had crib sheets of commands taped up all over my office. At the end of the month, I had attained an editing speed that was about half of my speed in vi, an editor I've used thousands of times in the past 14 years I've worked in UNIX. I think emacs has a lot going for it, and generally I think that modeless software is better than modal software. The main obstacle I see for emacs, however, is that it's begging for pull-down menus like a Mac or Windows program has. Using Control, Meta, Shift-Meta, and other weird key combinations just isn't as easy to use for me. On the other hand, your approach to editing might be different, and you might not have years of vi experience affecting your choice of editing environments. I encourage you to give emacs a fair shake by working through all the examples I have included. You may find that it matches your working style better than vi.
