I'm trying to get back into this and I have no idea where to start. Everything I read on J2EE is either 5 years old or presented in about 50 different frameworks and libraries to choose from. Can someone give me an honest answer (or at least an answer) on what the direction of J2EE is???

The direction of JEE (they dropped the '2' because it didn't make sense), is to use POJO application frameworks. The two biggest competing frameworks are Spring and EJB3. The following article, though a little out of date now, is a very good read to see the direction of JEE: http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/06/29/spring-ejb3.html Since that article was written, a Spring has added a lot of new features, including support for most of the EJB3 annotations. EJB 3.1 is in the works, and I've heard there a number of things in there that will make Spring and EJB3 coexistence easier. As for which one you choose, go with whatever you think looks more intuitive and easy. They're both very good.

I'd use JEE tutorial as it's used to be the first-touch material: http://java.sun.com/javaee/5/docs/tutorial/doc/ Y

I'm must the .NET framework right now and it seems everything is very easy and hands on. Good IDE's and stuff like 'intellisense' and 'refactoring' are essential to me. Can you suggest how I can setup my Java environment?? InetlliJ?? JBoss??

Probably NetBeans and Eclipse are the most popular IDE's. It's entirely a matter of preference and/or standardization within your organization which one you choose to use. There's a wealth of tutorials and resources for both platforms available. Next is your choice of application servers. For learning, NetBeans and the current incarnation of Sun's AS are a good choice. Now, it's even bundled with MySQL. I personally use Eclipse, as simply a matter of preference. Good luck to you, and welcome back to open, and free, standards!