Hm, instead of MC I prefer dired+ within Emacs, I have never used anything more powerful than this (particularly with TRAMP and the regex features.) So, if you are already learning Emacs, I think it pays off to at least take a look at dired(+).

(Minor remark: for smaller tasks [and instead of launching a terminal window] I prefer to use the DirOpus clone "worker" on UNIX.)