By default in Visual Studio 2010, the backspace key deletes a single character. I believe this behavior changed in VS 2005 but I keep forgetting how to change it. I know you can hold Ctrl+Backspace to delete the tab, but that to me is just slow and unnecessary. 90% of the time, I want to delete the entire tab when I hit backspace.

To make the backspace key delete an entire tab, go to Tools -> Options…, and expand Text Editor -> All Langauges ->Tabs. In the Tab group select the Keep tabs radio button. You can also do this on a per language basis if you wish.