I constantly rename variables. It's probably the single most frequent refactoring activity I do. And that's why I love Visual Studio 2005's built-in Smart Tags feature.
I use ALT+1 and ALT+2 for View Find 1 and View Find 2 respectively.
I use F2 for renaming identifiers. It’s the default hotkey used by ReSharper.
Thank you! I knew there had to be a hotkey for that function, but I could not find it. I didn’t know what those smart tags were called, or the associated operation that showed them. Now I can re-map the shortcut to Alt+/ like I did for ReSharper and it’s smart tag-like functionality.
As for other short cuts, I generally pretty happy with the default ones in Visual Studio. Usually it’s just a matter of me knowing the shortcut, and then forcing myself to use it until it becomes habit. Generally the ones I use the most are F5, Ctrl+Shift+B, Ctrl+Shift+F9(clear breakpoints), F10, F11.
“Ctrl+Alt+Knee” equivalent keystroke are really painfull for common tasks 
I reckon there’s at least one piano player working on the VS team…
I studied the piano for about 12 years, starting from the age of 5. I think it had a positive impact on my typing abilities.
I don’t find the Shift+Alt+F10 combination particularly challenging, and I suspect that’s why.
So the answer is simple - study the piano intensively. And make sure you start age 5.
Failing that, now that ThinkPads reputedly have a Windows key (thanks, presumably, to IBM no longer owning them), we can start to petition for even more shift keys. Bring on Escape+Meta+Alt+Coke-bottle+Shift. (That’s left coke-bottle - the full one rather than the empty one.)
Dude, use Quickeys, and the world is at your fingertips.
Products - QuicKeys for Windows - Overview
http://quickeys.com/products/qkw.html
if you like that, you should definitly check out the refactorings and sync edit features of Borlands developer studio product.
Cheers Tim.
Get a keyboard with the function keys on the left and shift-alt-f10 is no problem to type.
Study the piano since age 5 or sit for a moment, meditate, and channel the spirit of Ian Griffiths.
I doubt there’s much that Ian finds challenging. 
For the example mentioned above(Providing smarttags which basically asks whether the variable names should be renamed), why not the IDE just go ahead and change the instances of the variable instead of asking the user?
I always remap File/Close in Visual Studio to be Ctrl-W. That’s what it is in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, and gVim, among others. If it’s a tabbed windowing environment, I expect that shortcut to work.