I have the same feeling. It’s like having my hands cut off and writing code with my toes. 
At my previous workplace I had to sometimes use Eclipse/RAD because everybody else in the team was using it, and it was always painful - the usability (especially performance/productivity) was miserable and in addition I had to spend tens of hours dodging IBM RAD’s bugs (sometimes even getting the project to compile took many manual steps, even hours). So in the end I wrote the code in IDEA, sent it through CVS to my RAD, so that I could compile and deploy it to the application server using RAD.
In the beginning I used JCreator, but after a couple of years (late 2004) I was reaching JCreator’s limits and at that time JCreator did not have Java 5 support, so I had to change the IDE. I tried Eclipse, NetBeans and IDEA for a short while, and IDEA was the one with which it was the easiest to start a new project and get coding. Also here at JGF, many of those who had used all the main IDEs recommended IDEA as the best of them. Now that I’ve used IDEA for over two years, I say the same. 8)
When someone learning Java asks me which IDE to use, I usually tell them to use a simple editor with a button for compiling and running the project (such as JCreator or any text editor with syntax highlighting), so that they will first learn the language, can read javadocs and understand the compiler’s error messages. Then when they know the basics and start doing real projects, they can better appreciate what a full IDE provides.
IDEA’s EAP releases have Maven integration as well (a Maven plugin was bundled a couple of months ago). I’m using the latest EAP builds right now - if there are showstopper bugs, I’ll just revert to the previous release. Because of some architectural changes, the speed of the beta versions is better than that of the stable release, so it’s worth using version 7.0M1 or the EAPs instead of 6.0.5.
Upgrading IDEA is very simple. Just install to a new folder. The settings are stored in the home directory and upgrading minor versions requires no changes to them. When upgrading to a new major version, you can import your old settings if you want. Right now I have installed the latest stable version (6.0.5) and the latest two EAP builds of IDEA 7 (#7104 and #7111). The only thing requiring manual work is adding your own VM parameters to idea.exe.vmoptions. I usually add the parameters -server -Dsun.awt.keepWorkingSetOnMinimize=true and maybe increase the maximum heap space.