I do the same on my netbook, but use urxvt for a tabbed terminal. That lets me use shift + left/right to move between tabs, ctrl+left/right to shift tab orderi

I do the same on my netbook, but use urxvt for a tabbed terminal. That lets me use shift + left/right to move between tabs, ctrl+left/right to shift tab ordering, and ctlr+d to close one. So that's one desktop pane, then one for chrome, one for emacs, and one for pgadmin. I also make very liberal use of fluxbox's 'sticky' button for dragging a terminal between desktop switches.