Thanks for trying to do what many of us secretly wished we could do but can't because of time/skill constraints. I will definitely move to NeoVim the second it's packaged (is it yet?), regardless if you've changed anything yet. I hate the ideas many programmers have about backwards compatibility, that it's more important than development speed and modern concepts. There is nothing holy about Unix era software, chance…
I don't see anything shameful about using old software if it works well and suits your needs. Yes, new editors like SublimeText have advantages, and if you prefer them over Vim, use them. However, I've seen many projects undergo a rewrite in order to move to new technology, but they never matched the utility of the old technology they were trying to replace. I'm not saying it can't happen, but that it often doesn't.…
Does ^[ cancel input in any programs ? AFAIK vim understands the ^[, not the "escape key". the key labeled "ESC" creating a ^[ is a convention used in terminal emulators.
Not that it's going to help you now, but if you had trained your fingers to hit ^[ rather than the escape key (or even ^C but that has other semantics in windows whereas I don't think ^[ does), I wonder if you would be having the same problem now..