I use a Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard that has Ctrl, Alt (Meta for Emacs), and Win at the space bar. Some ergonomic setup like this is going to work much better than the usual suggestion of remapping CapsLock to Ctrl.
I second the suggestion of getting ergonomic keyboards with thumb clusters.
I also have the Kinesis advantage 2, and am also a fan of the convex keys. I also ordered a Kinesis 360 several months ago, but have not received it yet.