VI annoyance

[matt-urrlRJtNKRMsHrnhXWJB8w at public.gmane.org (Matt Shields)]

I've been using VI for about 5-6 years, previous I was a die-hard pico/nano
user.  I was forced to switch during my last job where there could be
multiple people working on the same systems, and possibly wanting to edit
the same files.  So vi's file locking when one person's editing was the
reason everyone was forced to use VI.

Anyway, 99% of the systems I manage are RHEL/Fedora/CentOS flavors and I've
been able to use the arrow keys instead of HJKL, I've also been able to hit
either i, I, o, O, a or A to go into insert mode (yes, I know how each is
different) and start typing/editing but also continue to use the arrow keys
to move around while in edit mode, then continue editing till you finally
hit ESC or CTRL-c.

But, now I have a bunch of Ubuntu boxes I need to manage and I have this
weird issue where I can go into insert mode but if I do anything other than
type characters (like arrow keys, or delete) it stays in insert mode but the
arrow keys start putting garbage characters and carriage returns into the
file.  I also used to be able to not only insert, but while I was typing I
used to be able to delete.

Any ideas?

Also, does anyone have any .vimrc goodies?

-matt