Verdict: Sun Microsystems is maintaining its high standards for product quality with this latest version of NetBeans. The IDE has a lot of features that are not present in other editors and will help make developers more productive. One of the highlights of NetBeans is its ease of integration with other products and tools. This is evident from the list of vendors creating plugins for NetBeans. If NetBeans can make improvements at this rate, it will soon have a user base that rivals Eclipse. Eclipse and NetBeans are all set to conquer the IDE market in the next few years. This competition is good for developers as we can expect better features from both the products as the competition heats up.

Excerpt: "...this venerable IDE is starting to look and behave like Eclispe--or even better."

Writer Fernando Cassia reviews a NetBeans Moblility Pack presentation during Sun Tech Days in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"Verdict: NetBeans has the most complete support for Java EE 5 of the open-source Java IDEs. It's an impressive collection of tools; developers contemplating enterprise Java applications should evaluate NetBeans before any other products. It is likely all they will need."

Verdict: 9/10. NetBeans is a "solid performer for all types of Java development, with an outstanding GUI editor and great profiling tools." Read more...

Excerpt: NetBeans 5.0 is a substantial upgrade to what was already a very solid IDE. This release reveals many new features, enhancements, and a slight repositioning, as Sun attempts to shine the spotlight on aspects that take NetBeans beyond the pure-play IDE.

Excerpt: Matisse is Java UI building done right. It is familiar, offers drag and drop placement, and sensible defaults that can still be altered and overridden easily for flexibility.

NetBeans IDE 5.0 is a substantial step toward bringing open-source, multiplatform Java tools up to the standard of toolmaking that is arguably defined by Microsoft's Windows-only Visual Studio.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the NetBeans Community have chosen not to rest on their laurels following the noteworthy success of NetBeans 4.0 and NetBeans 4.1. Instead, they have pushed forward with the development of NetBeans 5.0 which is currently in its second beta release, and will soon be available to the general public. This newest version of the IDE continues the effort that was started with NetBeans 4.1 to facilitate the development of robust Web Services and other server-side processes. However, version 5.0 also offers a number of new features to help developers build rich clients too. In addition, NetBeans 5.0 offers some other unique development features that basically put this IDE in a class by itself.

Three Java development environments built on the NetBeans platform provide powerful tools for building anything from applets to enterprise Web applications.

In this thorough review of the latest version of NetBeans, Jacques Surveyer assesses how NetBeans is holding its own against Eclipse and praises the visual design capabilities of the new release, stating that its GUI designer "gives it an edge" over Eclipse. Surveyer highlights the strengths of NetBeans for J2EE by chronicling his experience creating a JSP project.

In an in-depth review in Dr. Dobb's Journal, Eric Bruno remarks that NetBeans has come a long way since its first releases (when he was not comfortable using NetBeans and opted for Eclipse) and now is on par with Eclipse. He states that with 4.1, "NetBeans has become a premier Java development platform." Bruno favorably compares NetBeans to Eclipse throughout the article and concludes that when comparing NetBeans and Eclipse, there is no winner.

J2ME developers are accustomed to neglect, but the new NetBeans Mobility Pack 4.1 is among the best updates to the wireless development toolbox yet this decade.

Snappy performance (even based on Swing), new features--including no-code Web services--and the right price (free) makes this Java IDE one heck of a deal.

Falkman applauds NetBeans' 4.1 J2EE features, says that "wizards shorten the time to develop EJBs...deployment is easy...the HTTP monitor rocks...[and] the time it takes learning all of this will easily be returned in productivity gains," and concludes, "All arrows point towards go on this new revision of NetBeans."

The new NetBeans 4.1 Java IDE offers improvements in J2EE and mobile application support as well as easier development.

This one-time Eclipse developer who's tried a variety of Java IDEs over the years now believes Eclipse is a functionally handicapped IDE that's languishing under the influence of commercial interests.

Timothy Cramer, Director of Engineering for Netbeans, was interviewed by TSS, focusing on Netbeans' adoption rate, positioning, future capabilities, and - of course - comparison with Eclipse.

Jacques Surveyer gives NetBeans a very strong rating of 4 out of 5 stars. His bottom line is that "NetBeans is a versatile and highly configurable editor that stacks up very well against Eclipse. The key difference is that the NetBeans editor ties in well with additional functionality, such as the project manager, the GUI designer and the debugger."

Part of a package of reviews of all of Sun's developer platform offerings, the evaluation by Peter Coffee gives NetBeans 3.6 "excellent" ratings in the areas of usability, interoperability and performance, and "good" ratings in the areas of capability, manageability, scalability and security.