Ben: My decision-making was fractured and personal, because they both look terrific and very much worth learning. I went with Vim because based on talking to people and reading up on both, the learning curve was a bit less steep for Vim and it seemed to offer more immediate short term benefits for writing (as opposed to programming, etc.), which is how I will use it for now. Also, I just know more people who are using vi, so my tech support circle was greater there. :)

I have a very long list of things I still find baffling (like how to get ispell working more like auto-spell check in OS X), but I’m determined to stick with it til everything clicks.

My sense is, from talking to a lot of people about this, that learning either will eventually pay huge benefits for people who spend a lot of time doing anything with text. There are some paradigmatic bad habits that GUI editors encourage, and either of these editors really forces you to rethink text editing as much more than just a hobbled version of Microsoft Word or Front Page. The automation, scripting, shortcuts and endless benefits of shell manipulation come together in very compelling ways in both apps.