The Command-T plugin [1] was a big help in switching from TextMate to vim. I have no idea how anyone can be productive in vim without it (assuming you're working on a multi-file project).
I've been using FuzzyFileFinderTextmate for a long time. I'm not sure it's still in active development, but it's worked just fine for me; is there a reason for me to switch to Command-T?
I also stick to buffers rather than tabs (for terminal/gui consistency) and use buftabs, which I quite like.
You should instead consider switching to the mainline FuzzyFinder instead of the FFTextmate fork. FuzzyFinder is undergoing lots of activity.
You can also try using tabs to represent views of several buffers at once -- for example, I use one tab per app when working on Django code. I have the views, models, templates etc. in split buffers inside one tab.
I just glanced over the Command-T docs and it seems to be a one-trick-pony ("search in path") whereas FuzzyFinder supports a wide range of scopes (path, buffers, tags, etc.).
I use NERDTree and it's not even remotely close to Command-T (or PeepOpen, which is pretty much the same thing).
NERDTree is great for browsing your project and managing your files, but for opening files (when you know their names) you really can't beat the speed of Command-T/PeepOpen. They're in another league.
It can, in fact, search pretty much anywhere in vim (from the docs):
- buffers
- files
- directories
- most recently used files
- files around most recently used files
- most recently used command-lines
- bookmarked files
- bookmarked directories
- tags
- files which are included in current tagfiles
- jump list
- change list
- buffer lines
- quickfix
- help
1. https://wincent.com/products/command-t