Ok guys, I'm sure there's no need to introduce you this software but, since there's a free software section I just thought we have to mention Eclipse

Home Page

Eclipse is an amazing platform, written in java (mostly) and can be expanded to support any major language installing plugins

if you are looking for a better IDE give it a try, it's free and you'll love it.

Screenshots

Download (~ 120MB)

Well I have tried eclipse, but I find that it runs fairly slowly on my machine. It just doesn't perform up to what I expect that it should. Maybe that is because it is written mainly in java? I just find it takes forever to start up.

Despite the speed issues, it does seem to be an excellent IDE for things, and I have used it for a few projects, so it definitely is worth looking at and checking out.

it might be due to it being coded in java (I am not a fan of java myself but I have to admit it's powerful, and extremely portable, extremely big advantages), performance btw is affected by its own structure (the virtual machine layer)
Starting up may take a while on slow machines but after that you're done, runs pretty smooth after that
I don't know if you've ever tried netbeans ( if I'm not confusing with some other IDE ) it was really taking forever to start! (but it wasn't bad, the best after eclipse amongst those I've tried)
by the way the slowest machine I have run eclipse on is an AMD 2200+ with 512 MB ram so it might actually be a pain on even slower PCs (still talking only about starting it up)
considering that any software development doesn't require powerful computers it might actually run slow...I mean...you can really code on an old PIII but starting eclipse would probably allow you to get a coffee

I have a 1.7Ghz computer here......and it definitely takes a minute or so to start up for me, although it does depend, sometimes it'll start considerably faster. One thing I have noticed is that it starts a ton faster for me when I am in windows than when I am in linux.

As for netbeans, yes I have tried that, and I have to say that netbeans I seem to prefer to eclipse, as I just find it slightly easier to use.