I have a similar setup. Xmonad as the window manager, conkeror for the web browser (why would an emacs user use vimperator?), and emacs for everything else. (I also use rxvt-unicode, since it is scriptable in Perl and handles Unicode correctly.)

Some other things I use:

* bitlbee for non-IRC chat networks. I keep irssi running under screen on my remote server, and this means I am always on IRC and AIM (which I use instead of email, mostly). I get IRC/AIM/Jabber in emacs via ERC and irssi-proxy from the remote server.

* xmms2. It manages my music library like Amarok or iTunes does, but is very easy to control from external scripts. Back when I used amarok, I would always have to switch from emacs to my amarok desktop to change to a song by name. Now, with the help of a small perl script, I can hit C-c a a in emacs to change to any song I want. It's great.

The only major issue I have being mouseless is that there is always the occasional website that doesn't work right in Conkeror (hello, Stack Overflow), and I haven't found a good PDF reader yet. #xmonad didn't have much to say, so I use emacs for now. It is definitely non-optimal, though.

Anyway, I agree with the sentiment expressed in this article. Pretty desktops are nearly worthless for productivity. They may help inexperienced users achieve some minimal productivity, but once you are comfortable using your computer, they really get in the way.

Mouseless and WIMPless desktops are great. I've been using ratpoison for the last 6 months or so and I love it, previously I was using ION3 for about a year but I ended up not using the tabs at all, just having everything in fullscreen and using the hotkeys to switch between them. Of course it wouldn't work for everyone but when 99% of your computing time is spent in Emacs and Firefox it really does make sense.

I've been looking for a decent mouseless wm for XP. The choices seem extremely limited.

I haven't quite gone the way of mouseless, but I am using vimperator. When using Firefox I was already trying to navigate using vim keybindings, being that I am in my editor for most of the day. Switching to vimperator was pretty natural.

dwm, dmenu, mrxvt, w3m, xzgf, vifm, mpg123, mplayer, vim, curl

This kind of suffering is for people who haven't yet figured out that "the red nipple" is the best pointing device bar none.

This: http://moc.daper.net/

Is a great console music player.

I can live with my mouse as long as I have Quicksilver.

- xmonad, conkeror, urxvt, emacs23 (gnus, w3m, emms, erc)