ido-mode rocks

Overview of Ido

;;in the .emacs
(require 'ido)
(ido-mode t)
To switch between buffers C-x b:

type some characters appearing in the buffer name, RET to visit the buffer in the front the list.
use C-s (next) or C-r (previous) to move through the list.
[Tab] display possible completion in a buffer (or visit the buffer if there is only one possible completion).
use C-f to fall back to find file or C-b to fall back to switch to buffer.
To find a file C-x C-f:

type some characters appearing in the file name, RET to open the file in the front of the list.
C-s (next) or C-r (previous) to move through the list.
[Tab] display possible completion in a buffer (or open the file or go down the directory if there is only one possible completion).
type RET to go down inside the directory in front of the list.
type [backspace] to go up to the parent directory.
type two slashes to go to the root directory.
if you feel lost type C-f to go back temporarly to the normal find-file
do C-x C-d to enter Dired in this directory
to create a new file matching the text you entered do C-j (note that this is needed if the text you entered matches an existing file, because simply typing enter would rather open the existing one)
After C-x C-f in ido-mode, M-r doesn’t work as expected. With the default find-file, you can regexp search for recently opened files. With ido, the file names do show up in ido-work-file-list but I always get a ‘no earlier matching history item’ when searching for a history item.