I've remapped caps lock to ESC, which I think is a far better use of that useless button, and a hack i recommend to everybody i know who uses VIM.
I could never understand that VIM choose to put such an important button so far away from the homerow.
Moving it is easy, of course. Also, Ctrl-[ is usually the same key as Escape, and if you have CapsLock remapped to Ctrl, they're practically on the home row. (The article hints at this, but doesn't explicitly note that C-[ is Esc.) You could also remap CapsLock to Esc, of course.
Once in an effort to reach maximum typing efficiency, i attempted a switch to VIM+Dvorak. However, i quickly realized that i would have to use a Danish variant of Dvorak (there is no official standard..) and remap VIM to oblivion, which would make me too much of an oddball masochist.
I use the English/American Dvorak, but it takes me a second to switch back to qwerty as necessary. (I'm probably in the rare niche of mixed vi/emacs users, FWIW.) Vi + Dvorak isn't so bad, though I feel like Dvorak is (somehow) more compatible with Emacs.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/26/happy-hacking-keyboard-li...
Sorry. Had to get it out my system.
They have two thumbs, but within reach of their thumbs are extra keys. They need these extra keys because there are a lot of characters in their writing. They don't need more thumbs, because they only need to push one of these extra keys at a time.
Do I need more pointer fingers if I need to use one of the Y, H, N, B, T, G, and V keys?
I find that Mac keyboards are very difficult to remap. Is there any reason for that? Or maybe there's some utility that handles remapping I just can't find. Buggy as it is, I miss xmodmap.
If you want to map something to ESC, try PCKeyboardHack: http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/extra.html