VIP can be free from the line--limited movements in VI, such as l refusing to move beyond the line, ESC moving one character back etc. These derive from Ex, which is a line editor. If your .emacs contains
(setq vip-ex-style-motion nil)
the motion will be a true screen editor motion. One thing you must then watch out for is that it is possible to be on the end-of-line character. x and % will still work correctly, i.e as if they were on the last character.
Textmarkers in VIP remember the file and the position, so that you can switch files by simply doing 'a. If you set up a regimen for using Textmarkers, this is very useful. Contents of textmarkers can be viewed by [marker. (Contents of registers can be viewed by ]register).