If you are using emacs for anything more involved than editing config files every now and then you owe it to yourself try out a productivity enhancer like ido-mode. It lives in the minibuffer and provides way better completion for file names, emacs commands, buffers, you name it. Seriously, check it out if you haven’t already.
In all fairness, I should probably point out icicles as well as it seems to provide much of the same functionality as ido-mode. But since I’ve never used it I can’t really comment on it.