Only a full week on emacs in windows now, I can feel the CTRLkey combinations are beginning to hurt. Nobody suffers RSI because of emacs :-) ?
Is there any way to choose another key for a while (the M-key is replaceable by the ESC key I have noticed)
I would like to use, say the tab key, for a change. Any way to do that?
Google Ctrl2Cap utility. It allows you to map CAPS lock to additional Ctrl key. Handy not only for emacs, but in general.
I did suffer a year of RSI after several years of sixteen hours a day of coding in emacs. My solution is to use a Kinesis Countoured keyboard. That means that all of the modifier keys are under my thumbs.
If you think about it, existing keyboards encourage us to use our pinky fingers as if they were opposable thumbs. Thus my customized keyboard layout called I am not a koala. I went a step further than the standard Kinesis layout and moved the shift key under my thumb as well (I swapped Shift_L and DEL).
I admit, for most people moving the control key is enough, but for me my Kinesis and a customized keymap is better.
If you're already comfortable with vi, you might want to try out viper-mode. Using vi keybindings keeps your fingers on the home row more, and puts less of a strain on your pinkies. You still wind up needing to use CTRL some of the time, but significantly less often.