How about using more GNU screen or tmux? Just windows in vim won't help you much, same for just using more consoles.
With screen you can save sessions, as well in vim with :mks.
And in vim rebind ctrl+w,h/j/k/l to just ctrl+h/j/k/l! Also shortcuts for maximizing vertically, maximising horizontally and making all windows equally sized help. For resizing I also have shortcuts, but mostly I work with fullsizing/resizing all, window management is not the best feature of vim, without a mouse it is even worse.
Excerpt from my .vimrc:
" WINDOW MANAGEMENT SETTINGS
"moving from window to window
nnoremap <C-h> <C-w>h
nnoremap <C-j> <C-w>j
nnoremap <C-k> <C-w>k
nnoremap <C-l> <C-w>l
"open new blank file
nnoremap o<C-h> :lefta vsp new<cr>
nnoremap o<C-j> :bel sp new<cr>
nnoremap o<C-k> :abo sp new<cr>
nnoremap o<C-l> :rightb vsp new<cr>
"move window
nnoremap <Leader><C-h> <C-W>H
nnoremap <Leader><C-j> <C-W>J
nnoremap <Leader><C-k> <C-W>K
nnoremap <Leader><C-l> <C-W>L
"maximise horizontally
map <Leader>= <C-w><Bar>
"maximise vertically
map <Leader>- <C-w>_
"make all windows equally sized
map <Leader><Leader> <C-w>=
"change windowsizes in visual mode
"horizontally - always three chars else it takes ages
vnoremap - 3<C-w><
vnoremap = 3<C-w>>
"vertically - always three chars else it takes ages
vnoremap _ 3<C-w>-
vnoremap + 3<C-w>+
"moving from window to window in visual mode
"that way you can move from window to window and resize with -,=,_,+ directly as needed
vnoremap <C-h> <ESC><C-w>hv
vnoremap <C-j> <ESC><C-w>jv
vnoremap <C-k> <ESC><C-w>kv
vnoremap <C-l> <ESC><C-w>lv
For NERDtree I show the window and close it again. Since something is bugged with it, I open it and resize it to a fixed width automatically:
nnoremap <Leader><CR> :NERDTreeFind<CR>999<C-w><40<C-w>>010l