Java IDEs *Le sigh*

I do most of my programming in C/C++ using Microsoft IDEs. I'm a
student so this is the best avenue to take, my school has some nice
deals with them (Free Development Tools, Professional+ versions).

But I've been trying to get into Java, so I'm looking for a nice IDE
and I've been having a few problems finding one.

I generally don't like applications that don't *install*, but I
downloaded Eclipse anyways. It sounded very nice, especially since it
has C/C++ development tools. Too bad they're only for GCC (I use
Microsoft AND Borland compilers, but not the GCC). O well.

No visual designer, no support for web development. No built-in
support for applciation servers. I spent about 8 hours searching for
and downloading plugins to get something that was vaguely comparable to
what I am using for ASP/.Net development and ended up deleting it in
despair. The refactoring features are nice, but it's alot less
intuitive than VS.

Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8/Java Studio Creator. 2 IDEs for the
functionality of one? This boggled me, but I was intrigued enuff to
waste my time downloading them. JSE's UML support seems broken, JSC
looked nice. They ran really nice, for being Java IDEs. But, I have
to install two instances of Sun's Application Server to do any type of
web development? 1) You have the option to not install the AS with
JSE 2) You don't have the option to not install it with JSC 3) JSE
refused to use the AS that was installed with JSC 4) waste of time.

NetBeans is slow and clunky. And believe it or not, for a beginner,
those refactorings are important (if you actually understand them)
because you tend to make more coding mistakes that need to be undone.
Well NetBeans sucks in that department compared to Eclipse. Then again
Eclipse is more like Emacs on Windows.

I evaluated JBoss AS and found it ran exceptionally well on my "low end
development machine" (2.6GHz P4 HT w/ 512 MB RAM), but I couldn't even
get the Admin console applets to work correctly, not to mention it
seems rather mundane compared to Sun's exceptionally well-designed
Admin console for their application server. It used about 50MB less
RAM, though, and loaded up in 20-40 seconds (which is very good, on my
machine, I think). Seeing they had tools for Eclipse, I gave in and
redownloaded and installed them. O well, I'm still stuck working at
the code level.

JDeveloper has so much Oracle stuff in it I didn't even bother to mess
with it. It's too high maintenance as far as getting it to work with
my existing M$ technologies. It looked a bit promissing though.

Now, I know there are alot of veteran Java developers who would say
doing it at the code level is great. But I tend to learn alot by
working with the visual designers. I understand Eclipse has a visual
designer, but most of my interest is in web development; where Eclipse
sorely lacks in functionality. I don't feel like having to work with 2
separate IDEs (Sun), and I don't like software that slows my computer
down to a halt (Sun's AS, NetBeans). JBoss looks like a nice AS, if I
can get the Console to work. It still seems like there are no really
complete *non-vendor-specific* free IDEs out there. Maybe I'll just
save a few paychecks and purchase JBuilder.

Anyone have any recommendations as to nice alternative IDEs out there
other than the above mentioned? (I know of IntelliJ, will download the
trial later).

.

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