Effective way to research between competing IDEs?

[Banana]

Strictly speaking, this isn't really a programming question, but this is specific to selecting right IDE for the job.

I'm getting a bit frustrated because I'm trying to decide what tools will be best for my work's needs, but the options I can see are relentlessly advocated by those who use the program, and both sides tend to dismiss other program as mere toy or dinosaur, depending on which side they're on.

The infallible method would be to actually get my hands dirty and try out both. Unfortunately, time isn't a luxury I have, and given the learning curves, I'd be looking at weeks, and would rather not have to justify why I wasted weeks realizing that I really needed that IDE. Thus I am asking if there's a good place or some general suggestions where I can gather information about each capabilities without the marketing hype (which I can get plenty of from the company selling their IDEs) or fanboiism from the users which ultimately tells me nothing.

[Gargoyle]

I think that even with the most full featured IDE's there are three main things that you need to evaluate and make sure you are comfortable with.

1.) It's text editing capabilities.
There are the basics like syntax highlighting, but also many other small features that your programmers might already be using and it would hurt of they were suddenly missing - code snippets, jumping from a closing bracket to the correct opening one, auto indentation.

2.) File management
Can you quickly navigate around all the files in your project? Does it support any sort of versioning system, etc.

3.) Debugging
This last one depends on the language and environment being used. I have spent most of the last 4 years working with MS Visual Studio 2005 and C# .Net - If I did not have visual studio's ability to and breakpoints and "step into" and "step over" code I very much doubt I could work with .Net.

However, for as long as I have been programming I have also used PHP (must be getting on for 7 years now!) and I can happily use something like TextMate and just add my own debug statements.

I have never been lured away from a good quality text editor by any of the PHP environments because they were lacking in so many other features, the ability to do proper debugging just was not enough to pull me in. (Although I have yet to try the latest Zend Studio or the new Eclipse based one)

[chucker]

Among the advanced things would be 4: refactoring. Particularly for larger projects.