I totally agree with the remap caps-lock solution, that helps quite a bit.
To go even further, I tried and liked the Ergoemacs keybindings. The project is being actively developed, and supported quite well. I personally don't use it because it's not integrated with Mac OS X (some EMACS Keys are integrated in Cocoa), though it seems someone has posted an inputrc file with Ergoemacs keybindings.
Another trick I've been playing with is enabling StickyKeys. It's supported on many platforms and alleviates some of the problems specific to chording (as opposed to just overuse): it is apparently recommended on the emacswiki: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/StickyModifiers
