I used Emacs for about three months and I could see the reason people deemed it great. Still, it somehow didn't work for me. Felt too clunky and ugly somehow. Also, I tried Vim for even a longer time, but couldn't get to love it. Also, neither editor is usable by anyone other than me, which was important to me at that time.

(I used both for several hours per day for Latex, C/C++ and Matlab)

Then, I started looking for Alternatives. I found MANY. But the one I really felt in love with is TextMate. Somehow, It just works for me... I love its design: This "Emacs the easy way" with beautiful text rendering and without icon-clutter. But that is probably just me. Everyone has to find his own solution.