I've found a system wide mapping of 'Caps Lock' to 'Esc'(and vice versa) a much better use of keyboard estate / ergonomics.

Although the mapping was prompted by Vim usage, it's surprisingly useful for general computing as well.

Me too. I put escape on my caps lock key on my Ergodox and it's awesome. I miss it whenever I use another keyboard. Escape gets a lot of use everywhere and is in kind of an awkward spot, while for me at least caps lock is literally never used and is in a very comfortable spot.

On Windows, I use the Uncap [ https://github.com/susam/uncap ] tool because it does not require install or restart. The tool has good documentation to map CapsLock to Escape for Linux and MacOS too.

On the flip side, I struggle to use Vim when I need to do so someone else's computer. :-D