Using Vim's tabs like buffers

Stop, stop, stop.

This is not how Vim's tabs are designed to be used. In fact, they're misnamed. A better name would be "viewport" or "layout", because that's what a tab is—it's a different layout of windows of all of your existing buffers.

Trying to beat Vim into 1 tab == 1 buffer is an exercise in futility. Vim doesn't know or care and it will not respect it on all commands—in particular, anything that uses the quickfix buffer (:make, :grep, and :helpgrep are the ones that spring to mind) will happily ignore tabs and there's nothing you can do to stop that.

Instead:

• :set hidden
  If you don't have this set already, then do so. It makes vim work like every other multiple-file editor on the planet. You can have edited buffers that aren't visible in a window somewhere.
• Use :bn, :bp, :b #, :b name, and ctrl-6 to switch between buffers. I like ctrl-6 myself (alone it switches to the previously used buffer, or #ctrl-6 switches to buffer number #).
• Use :ls to list buffers, or a plugin like MiniBufExpl or BufExplorer.

Bit late to the party here but surprised I didn't see the following in this list:

:tab sball - this opens a new tab for each open buffer.

:help switchbuf - this controls buffer switching behaviour, try :set switchbuf=usetab,newtab. This should mean switching to the existing tab if the buffer is open, or creating a new one if not.

Vim :help window explains the confusion "tabs vs buffers" pretty well.

A buffer is the in-memory text of a file.
A window is a viewport on a buffer.
A tab page is a collection of windows.

Opening multiple files is achieved in vim with buffers. In other editors (e.g. notepad++) this is done with tabs, so the name tab in vim maybe misleading.

Windows are for the purpose of splitting the workspace and displaying multiple files (buffers) together on one screen. In other editors this could be achieved by opening multiple GUI windows and rearranging them on the desktop.

Finally in this analogy vim's tab pages would correspond to multiple desktops, that is different rearrangements of windows.

As vim help: tab-page explains a tab page can be used, when one wants to temporarily edit a file, but does not want to change anything in the current layout of windows and buffers. In such a case another tab page can be used just for the purpose of editing that particular file.

Of course you have to remember that displaying the same file in many tab pages or windows would result in displaying the same working copy (buffer).