Thank you all for your comments! I appreciate your viewpoints. I chose to ask this question here because I highly respect those who visit this site. Now a few more comments if you don't mind...

(1) I'm in a mixed environment: Windows, Linux, AIX. In some cases I have GUIness available - Always with Windows, occasionally with Linux, rarely with AIX. I do much of my work on a desktop computer, but I don't want to lose productivity if I am mobile and using my laptop.

(2) I'm not a full-time developer, but rather a part-time programmer. I'm the IT guy for my organization, which means that I sometimes write code and other times I crawl under desks to do cabling, answer dozens of annoyingly easily computer questions each day, etc.

(3) I come from the 'visual' school of programming, i.e. Borland's Turbo C/C++ in the late 80's, VB6 in the late 90's, Visual Studio more recently, etc. What this means is that I've grown up on debugging programs visually.

The bottom line for me is this: when I'm just hacking a script, any editor will do. When I'm writing a program, I prefer an editor that at the very least has syntax highlighting and lets me set things like tabs, folds up code blocks, etc. Finally, when I'm developing an application I really feel most productive when I have a good IDE. As the complexity level of my project increases I find it valuable to have an environment that can keep up. I find that when developing applications my needs are spread out:
   I use Subversion (which I LOVE) to keep SRM under control.
   I frequently use .sql files to talk to a MySQL database.
   I frequently use .html files for various reasons.
   I occasionally need some JavaScript code.
   I usually have some binary support files (PDF,.doc,etc.).

The question for me has always been: Is there one solution that can help me with all of the above? Until recently, the answer was No. However, after avoiding Eclipse for the past two years I've gone back to see how things are getting along. I'm pleased with the progress made by the community as a whole and by the E-P-I-C plug-in developers. Recently I bit the bullet and forced myself to go through the labors of getting Eclipse working on several different computers, both Windows and Linux. The results have been promising!

EasyEclipse LAMP works extremely well for me. It's got the Eclipse add-ons to make LAMP developing pretty straightforward. It can debug in various scenarios, like normal, CGI, etc. I can edit Perl files in a Perl editor, HTML files in an HTML editor, .sql files in a SQL-friendly editor, all on the same screen. Like I said, I am extremely comfortable in the visual environment.

If you are into the visual environment also then I recommend at least giving Eclipse a test drive. It has definitely come a long way in the past year.

-MC