[copper]

Vim is definitely faster at starting up ;)

For "." you could say that C+k,C+_/C+y does most of what I want done -- and arguably, the more complex cases might be amenable to using regexp-replace.

Regretfully, the only time I ever use hjkl is to play crawl :) The emacs keys are perhaps more geared towards using modifiers, with M-f/M-b + C-f/C-b serving as the closest replacements for movement, and M-z for zap-to-char.

[dilap]

Faster startup ain't nothing! I'm religious about making my .emacs only load modules on demand (using autoload and eval-after-load -- lisp is a great editor customization language, actually), and have managed to get emacs down to 250ms:

  gin17 ~ $ time emacs --eval '(save-buffers-kill-emacs)'
  real	0m0.256s

But that's still a lot slower than instant, which is where vim is:

  gin17 ~ $ time vim --cmd :q
  real	0m0.006s

I definitely don't feel that emacs editing is bad, and I use and appreciate one-off macros, [regexp-]-isearch-and-replace, and killing and yanking (the kill ring is awesome), but...I think the grass might be greener.

Well, after all this discussion, I'm probably morally obligated to spend more time with vim (or maybe vimpulse) so that I actually know what I'm talking about. :)