Good stuff from all the musicians on this thread. The capo can be a Godsend, of course, but I will go along with Peter T's cautionary word about over reliance on it. You can use your favourite runs in most keys by using a capo, but the further up the neck you go, the more resonance you will have to sacrifice from your bass strings. The other disadvantage, as you progress, is that it will make less of the fretboard available to you. Use a capo by all means, but keep on leaning bar chords and runs and chord inversions, which you can use in other positions.
You do not always even need full chords. If you are playing in E, for example, you only need to fret two or three strings most of the time. You can get some lovely effects just sliding these shortened chord forms up and down the neck. (It is like lot of things in life -you can make up for not being really good by learning to cheat better!)