1. If you're not willing to change your keybindings to taste, Emacs basically isn't for you; its default bindings are terrible. I suggest binding switch-to-buffer (C-x b) and other-window (C-x o) to single, easy-to-reach chords (I use C-. and C-' respectively).
2. switch-to-buffer sucks. Use iswitchb-mode; it gives you interactive completion of buffer names with substring matching. It also lists your buffers in most-recently-used order, so switching back-and-forth between two buffers is trivial. (There's also ido-mode, which adds interactive completion to even more things with even more features.)
Basically this is the same issue that emacs has always had: the learning curve is steep and you have to invest some time and explore in order to find settings that work for you. (I'm sure you're happy with your current setup; I'm making this post more for people who might be scared away from Emacs than to try and convert you.)