I'm about to evaluate some IDEs for J2EE development. My development team is currently using ultra-edit. Time to move on... What's the best best IDE for J2EE development out there and why?

I really like Eclipse. It is open-source, and there are lots of plugins available, for things like Tomcat, Struts, JDO etc. It is also much faster performance-wise than Netbeans.
Take a look at http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/index.jsp for a listing of plugins available for Eclipse - a majority of them free.

I'd suggest Eclipse or IntelliJ.

Eclipse, if you are cheap or just hate the thought of spending money on productive software.

IntelliJ, if you don't mind spending a little money to get probably the best overall Java IDE available.

That said, I tend to recommend looking into Eclipse first since it is free and does have a lot of support. Don't try IntelliJ if you are cheap since it will spoil you and you'll spend nights awake. :-)

Middle ground? I've heard that for $30/year subscription you can get MyEclipse, which is Eclipse with support and a ton of supported plugins. I'd go this way if I went Eclipse since I'd like a full suite of compatible plugins from the get go.

For J2EE you want, refactoring support, ant integration, JSP editor with code completion (very nice).

I use IntelliJ becuase why would I spend $2500 on a kick ass laptop and then cheap out on an IDE? Just me though.

Try Pramati Studio.
Its ease for devlopment.

Intellij Intellij Intellij Intellij!!

-Arush

thanks for your help