i must disagree - i've been much much more productive since setting up netbeans for bb - the intellisense is poor in the rim jde and netbeans has so many more useful features that the rim jde lacks (not least being very good refactoring). netbeans ui is also much snappier, the rim jde feels sluggish.
the way i have development set up (and i've heard other do the same) is to use netbeans for main dev but use the rim jde for debugging and compiling as it is quicker to build, that way you get the best of both worlds.
i've been doing this for over a year now and the benefits are huge.
an example build xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="" default="jar" basedir=".">
<description>Builds, tests, and runs the project .</description>
<import file="nbproject/build-impl.xml"/>
<property name="rim.blackberry.home" location="C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.0"/>
<property name="rim.blackberry.emulator" value="8100"/>
<target name="post-jar">
<exec os="Windows NT Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows 2000 Windows XP" dir="${dist.dir}" executable="${rim.blackberry.home}/bin/rapc.exe" failonerror="true" resolveExecutable="true">
<arg value="import=${rim.blackberry.home}/lib/net_rim_api.jar"/>
<arg value="codename=${name}"/>
<arg value="${dist.jad}"/>
<arg value="${dist.jar}"/>
</exec>
<copy file="meshPing.alx" todir="${dist.dir}"/>
</target>
<target name="run" depends="init,jar">
<copy todir="C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.0\simulator" verbose="true">
<fileset dir="${dist.dir}">
<include name="**/${name}.*"/>
</fileset>
</copy>
<exec os="Windows NT Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows 2000 Windows XP" dir="C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.0\simulator" executable="C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Device Simulators 4.1.0\Device Simulators 4.1.0.316/${rim.blackberry.emulator}.bat" failonerror="true" resolveExecutable="true"/>
</target>
<target name="debug" depends="init,jar">
<copy todir="C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.0\simulator" verbose="true">
<fileset dir="${dist.dir}">
<include name="**/${name}.*"/>
</fileset>
</copy>
<delete file="${preprocessed.dir}/.timestamp"/>
<parallel>
<property name="jpda.port" value="8000"/>
<java jar="${rim.blackberry.home}/bin/JDWP.jar" fork="true" dir="${rim.blackberry.home}/bin">
<jvmarg value="-Xmx128M"/>
</java>
<sequential>
<sleep seconds="5"/>
<antcall target="nbdebug"/>
</sequential>
</parallel>
</target>
<target name="post-clean">
<echo>Post clean</echo>
<delete>
<fileset dir="C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.2.0\simulator">
<include name="**/${name}.*"/>
</fileset>
</delete>
</target>
</project>
Configuring to netbeans
