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I'm guessing that the viruses came from somewhere else. Netbeans is distributed by a highly reliable source (Oracle/Sun Java), and doesn't come with any viruses.

Get a good anti virus program and...

To each his own :P

From what I've heard about NetBeans, it's just as good as Eclipse, but I've never actually did any extensive use with it. Command-line is a useful skill to have, too (I know...

Which book are you referring to?

I would strongly recommend eclipse :D It's very powerful, and the learning curve is fairly shallow (so long as you ignore the advance features, which you can do)....