[silentbicycle]

I know this is a late reply, but you're very right about C-x z and vi's . having different groupings. I'm so used to defining keyboard macros for any operation I want to repeat as a whole that it didn't even occur to me.

I'm easily sucked into vi / emacs threads, and I've talked about this at length a few times. I have a bit over five year experience with each, at this point. I prefer vi's general keyboard interface design (edit vs insert mode, etc.), because it gets rid of most of the modal keys that Emacs uses, but strongly prefer Emacs's "continuous environment"/integration and general extensibility. On the balance, I prefer Emacs. (And while there are vi-emulation modes for Emacs, such as viper, few extensions provide vi-like keybindings for them.)