I have a herd of VX-7Rs and use the RTSystems package to program them. I did learn how to program manually, but it's convoluted and one must really plan ahead to do it well. It's also nice to be able to program multiple radios exactly the same without pushing radio buttons all day. The RTSystems control stores data into a spreadsheet format and you can have different spreadsheets for differing applications. I have even had limited success copy/pasting data from a VX-7R spreadsheet into an FT-8900R and FT-857 and vice-versa.
I have an AO in VA and another in MD, and have two different spreadsheets for the radios. To set myself up for any given area, I just select the saved data for the appropriate locale and stick it up in the radio.
Having info installed for both locales at the same time is troublesome, because repeater frequencies are duplicated (Waynesboro, VA & Glen Burnie, MD, for example) but have different tone control frequencies and it can get confusing to try to communicate with one station when your scanning stopped you on the duplicate frequency. It also extends the sweep time of the scan function if you have 25 unused (in that particular area) frequencies when you're only within range of the other set of repeaters.
I also have an emergency mode spreadsheet that puts the radios on a short list of 4 frequencies and locks the keyboard. This allows me to quickly set up 4 or 5 of the radios programmed into this mode and pass them around, with a reasonable expectation that an untrained operator won't get lost in the multiple bands and hundreds of frequencies available.