Personally I think IntelliJ is the most intelligent java  IDE.
If you prefer to code anything by yourself then
Intellij is your best alternative.
IntelliJ IDEA was selected as three finalist in 2001 JavaWord Editor's
Choice Award.
the interesting point is that JetBrain Inc.(IntelliJ maker)
is a Prague, Czech Republic based company
with offices in St. Petersburg, Russia and the United States.

some of its great features are:
-Syntax sensitive word selection
-Multiple forms of navigation
-Local history
-Flexible JUnit support
-Well designed refactoring support
-Code assistants
-Flexible code reformatting
-Great XML support
-Intuitive and easy to use GUI
-Automatic synchronization with the file system
-Customizable Keyboard Mapping
-Dynamic error highlighting
-Inspections
-Complete understanding of JSP
-Smart editing
-EJB support
-Almost no wizards!
-Smart templates
-Best support for code completion
-Ant integration
-Unused code highlighting
-Regular expression search and replace
-Quick JavaDoc

You can also read IntelliJ IDEA 3.0 review in Java Developer's Journal,
September issue:
http://www.sys-con.com/java/article.cfm?id=1611.

I use NetBeans and Forte for Java, and I avoid manual code ( typing Java code )
as much
as possible.
If I used IntelliJ, would I ever miss NetBeans and Forte.

It is worth to try IntelliJ, You'll certainly impressed by its great features,
It has a very intelligent code editor,
but if you want an IDE that automatically generate
everything for you including generating xml descriptors,
ejb home/remote interfaces, making by patterns, automatic
deployment and debugging upon an specific App server and ...
then you may be more satisfied by some other
rapid environments such as JBuilder,TogetherJ,SunONE Studio or...
we usually compare Intellij against NetBeans or Eclipse,
personally I prefer it to both of them, but IntelliJ has some
weaker pluggability in comparison to NetBeans or Eclipse,
and also less marketting by JetBrain Inc. .

The big difference between IDEA and other IDEs is that you get so
addicted to it that you can't *code* without it anymore! I stress the
word *code* because IDEA is about coding, not fancy useless wizards. I
can't imagine coding anymore without IDEA's refactoring options and
well-designed GUI. I use IDEA and for the EJB, SOAP, etc stuff I use
XDoclet, plus Ant (and Maven) for the build. Who cares about
ejb/deployment wizards? Wizards are passive, an automated
build/code-generation is active. An active process can save you much
more time than whatever wizard out there.

These are some thought and some questions I like to share.

Back in spring 1996 when Java was presented to me, my reaction was Java is
promising.
However without a modern development tool, it costs to much to develop in Java
and I was
not going spend any time with it until a decent modern development tool RAD (
rapid
application development ) is available, even if it means I have to leave my job.

Fall 1996 Café showed up and I happily started to learn Java.

What I did not like and still dislike is most RADs generate their own code for
awt and
swing.

I had to live with them until NetBeans showed up and I loved its GUI builder
because it
did not generate those ugly code .

Where I am which is Canada, programmers are under extreme constant pressure to
produce.
The income, and working condition is excellent, if one can handle the pressure
and
stress.

Here if I can not deliver on time on budget I am fired.

What I do not understand is why anybody would like to type repetitive
rudimentary
abstract words over and over.

Let's say I do a deferential equation for the first time. Yes it is fun and I
enjoy the
intellectual challenge.

Just as I enjoyed leaning JSP, tag library, and tag handlers etc.

Now would I want to write  the same deferential equation solution or very similar
ones
over and over every day.
Sorry no, if I have to, I change my job and pickup some factory job.

For the same reason I like to use the wizards to generate my code.

By the way NetBeans started in east Europe and who knows maybe the same
programmers are
doing IntelliJ, and IntelliJ may one day become superior to all RADs

Actually IDEA is implemented by the same people who've developed
Together/J. It's rather interesting that they've moved from implementing
a heavy UML-ish product to a simple and effective XP-ish IDE which
supports refactoring and TDD and such.

I think that IntelliJ IDEA is the best editor that I
'v ever used as I tested most of famousouse java  IDEs,
but the problem is that It is for those java
developers who are experienced in java code and so
don't expect that the IDE generate any code for them.

IntelliJ IDEA is not a complete modern Java IDE ,but
it's a complete and also excellent editor.

Well one of good points of IntelliJIdea was ease of use with keyboard
only. We used it as our project IDE, programmers were are satisfied.

I'm agree with you to some extent,
but it also depends on the type of work
that you are doing,
for example at the moment I'm developing a j2ee middleware,
no ejb , no swing ,.. just jmx/jms/net... and
I'm really satisfied by IntelliJ+Ant+XDoclet I can not find
any environment as rapid as these tools. But if I
wanted to develop a swing application , a web application,
or... then I certainly look for a more rapid way,
but anyway I think at the same time we sholud find a way to
enhance our knowledge , and some low level IDE's such
as intellij , netbeans can help us in powering
our knowledge.