Why? Because you think Vim's tabline is a replacement for :ls<CR> ? I talk to a lot of people trying to use Vim's tabs the way other editors use tabs--to list the open files--but it doesn't always work.

just wanna mention my setup, which is to bind the tabs to Alt+number keys:

  map <A-1> 1gt
  map <A-2> 2gt
  map <A-3> 3gt
        .
        .
        .

I don't think it's a replacement for :ls<CR>. I simply think it is worth mentioning both in an article called "Vim made easy...".

Sorry. That's what I assumed since you compared tabpages to MiniBuffExplorer. MBE does what a lot of people think the tabline should do, but doesn't.

Definitely. At first I made the mistake thinking that tabs were there to help me manage my buffers (and used them for this purpose, remapping :e to :tabe), but it turns out that instead they're just workspaces, which isn't what I actually want most of the time. I use buftabs (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1664) to display the list of open buffers in the status line, and map the right and left arrows to :bnext and :bprev.