I use Emacs with all of the ido stuff. Even with dozens of buffers open, I can just hit C-x b and then a couple of characters in the name of the buffer I want.

I use Emacs with all of the ido stuff. Even with dozens of buffers open, I can just hit C-x b and then a couple of characters in the name of the buffer I want. I don't even have to use consecutive character; 'fb' would work to match 'foobar.txt'. You can have a shell in an Emacs buffer, but I could never really get used to that. Instead, I use Tilda to have a Quake-style console that I can show or hide as I need.