Efficient Emacs usage?

[FCC]

Hello all,

Having been using Emacs for developing code and writing articles since
1998 on Windows which gave me enough time to discover its wealth of
features, now I wonder if I am using it the most productive way possible.

Yesterday, I was browsing the info node Emacs, and I came across the
function find-dired. Then, I thought, in the morning, at work, how does
one actually start working? Most of the time it is part of a file name
that is remembered, sometimes a directory. Using Explorer to try to find
it is probably the worst way of doing this (which, I admit, what I used
to do; sort of walking around the city trying to go to a friend's
place). Smarter is to search for a file or directory name using
Explorer; use mouse to choose one particular type of search, next fill
out a form (today's software world is very much in love with WYSIWYG
type``forms", which is sort of an overshoot to search for a file - if
not for many other things). Then, I discovered find-dired, and
configured it to use Cygwin, and by pressing a key combination plus
answering 2 questions on the minibuffer, my search was on the run
already. The resulting *find* buffer has another big advantage: It is a
dired buffer with tons of features: For example, I could copy the path
to clipboard, and then I could use it in opening or saving documents
with other Windows applications on the same directory, instead of
browsing my way through all the directories on my hard drive. There are
the desktop and session modes to remember all the open files from
yesterday. But to locate that one, one has to still search for a file or
directory name.

Probably next comes the search-replace functions that work inside a
buffer; specifically isearch-occur and isearch-forward-regexp. Then
comes the grep and its variants, plus other functionality in dired...
However, for file copying, renaming, moving, etc. I am using one of
those freely available Norton Commander-style  dual pane file managers,
called freeCommander. Very intuitive. I would love to use such a mode
that also supports the functionality of dired in Emacs. I know the
mc.el, and ec.el; but I could never get the function-key bindings
working with mc.el; and ec.el is too simple (it does not support dired).

But what if one is starting a new file? Use skeletons and
auto-inserting! I configured Emacs to auto-insert my template for that
particular type of file; for example several LaTeX templates or an elisp
function template. That is simply great; it not only saves you lots of
keystrokes, but also it lets you concentrate on the more important parts
of your work by freeing you from remembering all the exact syntax.

I am wondering if I am missing anything of Emacs that could be of great
use to me (sorry, gnus does not count for me, although I am very much
aware of its popularity among Emacs users, because probably it would be
more efficient for me if I did not have to check or send e-mails and
also spend less time on the internet).

Thanks in advance and best,

-- 
FCC.

===
Assimilate my shorts!
-Borg Simpson.