You'll want to check out dotfiles.com also, btw. I considered putting this in a separate link, but thought that since you asked, it wouldn't be too terrible to post here. There are a few things I include in every .emacs file I have across multiple shell accounts, and this is more or less the entirety of it:

  ;; how emacs behaves generally
  (setq scroll-step 1)
  (setq next-line-add-newlines nil)
  (setq search-highlight t)
  (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)

  ;; some niceties on the status bar
  (display-time)
  (setq column-number-mode t)
  (setq line-number-mode t)

  ;; other shortcuts
  (global-set-key "\C-^" 'enlarge-window)
  (global-set-key "\C-c\C-w" 'compare-windows)

  ;; fix broken backspace
  (global-set-key "\b" 'backward-delete-char)
  (global-set-key "\C-xt" 'term)

  ;; UTF-8 goodness
  (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
  (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
  (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)

  ;; I'm into Perl, but prefer cperl-mode over the default
  (defun modify-alist (alist-symbol key value &optional search-cdr)
    (let ((alist (symbol-value alist-symbol)))
      (while alist
        (if (eq (if search-cdr
                    (cdr (car alist))
                  (car (car alist))) key)
            (setcdr (car alist) value)
          (setq alist (cdr alist))))))
    
  (modify-alist 'interpreter-mode-alist 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode t)
  (modify-alist 'auto-mode-alist        'perl-mode 'cperl-mode t)

  ;; the one true indentation level
  (setq cperl-indent-level 4)