I want to develop these applications on Win XP SP2.

Please tell me the difference between these IDE's - Gel, Eclipse, JCreator, BlueJ, NetBeans. Do we need Java Compiler with all of these or it is included with the IDE. I wish to develop JAVA, JSP & EJB programs, which IDE is best for it?

Also tell which application server will I need for EJB?

How do you compare WebLogic, WebSphere & JBoss?

Is there any free application server available?

I already have Tomcat Web Server for JSP/Servlets.

i used jcreator as a student. it is not user friendly but it would help you understand the basics. professionally i used eclipse and it has lots of helpful functions. it even has an autocomplete where in you do not have to type the entire word of the method. it also has plug ins to star and stop tomcat. can help you debug, and lots more. i believe eclipse and netbeans are used a lot in IT companies

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. Does that plus a whole lot more. You can use a bit torrent to download it. Awesome program. User friendly

Not much difference. I used most of these while I was studying and they all perform the same functions. If I had to choose one I would say go with JCreator. Dunno why, I just liked it a little better (I did most of my coding in TextPad which is like notepad but with colours).