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> Yea, tabs are a very useful feature in vim that many people don't seem to use. I know people that use the panes.

I don't use tabs because I don't find them useful at all. If I need to see 2 files at once, split panes it is; if I am switching between files, I have them open as buffers(NERDTree and BufExplorer makes it pleasant).

> I use tmux as my window manager for my terminal, so I have not use for panes in vim.

I use tmux as well. The only times I use tmux panes is when I need to run shell in the same window.

> I just have a bunch of vim processes running and use tmux for the window management.

And I have one vim process running for one project root. Coding rails? Open vim in top folder and open all files from there using rails.vim navigation commands(:Rcontroller, :Rmodel...) or NERDTree and switch between them using BufExplorer.

Opening two files in a split-pane in Vim is different from opening two Vim's and panning them with a window manager.

This is because all the state is shared within a single Vim: buffers, copy-paste information, and so on.

I use tmux too, but I prefer the way vim handles panes. When I'm in mental-vim mode, it's easier for me to not have to jump out to thinking in tmux terms when editing several files.

attach/dtach/dvtm perhaps then......