Rather than using Emacs standalone, I like using ratpoison as the window manager. That way I can have a full screen Emacs and easily use other applications, too. Bonus points for not having to use the mouse for any of it.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried StumpWM? It was also created by Shawn Betts; the idea was essentially to rewrite ratpoison in lisp.
Yeah, I've used StumpWM. I don't really like Common Lisp so I don't use it anymore. I want to use guile-wm because it's written in Scheme, but it's not ready to be a daily driver.