[Kindly tell me if I should move this off-list.]

Even if you worked for free or peanuts, you would miss the many features that helps you write clean and solid code (the inspections), the integrated JUnit integration, the code formatter, the code pointer sharing (ideTalk plugin), etc, etc...

I did try it for a month, but it didn't quite *click* for me. I appreciated the code sense and such, but I ultimately had a hard time reaching for all the other options (e.g. refactoring, etc.). It could be that I just need more programming experience in Java to "feel" the need for these extra tools. As such, it was heard enough for me to stop using vim!

(Also, my first point was a bit in jest. I would spend $500 for a superior IDE I felt comfortable using, but I simply preferred the faster response time of within TextMate rather than the general sluggishness that came about from IntelliJ.)

(2) Couldn't bear what IntelliJ was doing to my PowerBook's RAM. I guess it depends on your project's size, but it works fine on mine, with 1GB and java 5.

I'm actually on a 1.25 GB PowerBook. Alain, would you mind if I write you privately, to compare our IntelliJ configurations?

thanks, dev