This should probably go in the lounge. Click the 'edit topic' button and move it to the Lounge rather than the Beginners section.
Myself, I just use whatever is handy, I don't really have preferences. At the moment, I am currently (as in, right now) using Emacs for my current forage into Java, trying out gjc. Eclipse seems a pretty good IDE as they go, though. More than that, I can't really answer your question, as I haven't used Netbeans (though I think I read somewhere that Eclipse is based on netbeans or something?)