Emacs started life in the 1970s at the MIT AI Lab. It began as a set of editing macros. It has grown to become an extremely popular tool for editing, document processing, and development. Emacs's strengths include the following:
There are several ways to start Emacs. You may have an Emacs entry in one of your X Windows menus. But better (see below) type emacs in a Cygwin window. Cygwin gives a unix-like feel to windows and you'll find Emacs and Unix are good friends who play nicely together. Most of what you need to know has been squeezed onto two sides of one sheet -- the Emacs Reference Card. See if you can find one using Google. Treasure it. Memorize it. Become one with it. Also, note that this sheet uses C- to mean the control key and M- to mean the "meta" key. The meta key is found in multiple places. On most Macintoshes, and on the machines in the labs, you can hit the esc key followed by the key being modified (so M-q is the esc key followed by the q key). Note that for any of these, you must type the meta key, then the modified key (without holding the meta key down). We will use the same syntax as the Emacs reference card for these modifier keys.
For a more formal introduction you can use the Emacs Tutorial, which runs (naturally!) in Emacs itself. To view this tutorial, start up Emacs, pull down the Help menu and select "Emacs Tutorial" (or simply type C-h t). When you're done working for the day, remember to quit Emacs by typing C-x C-c. Or use Google to find other Emacs tutorials more to your liking.