I use emacs as my editor of choice, though I've never really become a super-expert in it, and I recommend it warmly.

What I advise is to make a list of basic keyboard commands and look it up whenever you're doing something; in my experience, you should memorize them effectively very soon. What I would initially include into the list are basic file commands (opening, saving, navigation, revert-buffer), copy/paste, find/search/replace, and etags commands (if you're programming). If you want, you can post your list, and I can tell you what I think should be added to it. (I still occasionally find out about some amazingly useful feature I hadn't known.)

Also, the default setup for emacs can be ugly and inconvenient, so the first step should be to customize your .emacs configuration file. You can find lots of good examples if you just google for them, and modify one as you like. By the way, if you can, install emacs 23, which supports magnificent anti-aliased fonts.