Zend Studio 7.0.2 - Lot of new stuff, same old issues

I've been a Zend Studio IDE user for about 5 years now. I've always loved the IDE since it was so well tuned for PHP projects. Last year I made the blind leap of faith into using Zend Studio 6.0 and was extremely disappointed in what it provided to the developer. The release had so many bugs and never really stood up well against their previous 5.x release...

When 6.0 was released with all the bugs and issues it contained, I went out of my way to write a 3 page bug list for the team. Why? Because I love Zend and their IDE. It is what makes my life as a developer much easier. I was hoping that pointing out the "features" of 6.0 that was causing so much pain for me to even consider using their product would be enough to send them a message: Change it, or lose yet another developer.

Today I installed Zend Studio 7.0.2 Professional, totally expecting to see these issues resolved. While the IDE shows a drastic change in speed, the same errors and exceptions remain, thus making working in Zend Studio a much more complicated headache than it ever should be.

Granted I would never be able to create the things Zend has for an IDE, however this is not even the case this time. Zend has decided (as of their 6.0 release) to use the Eclipse engine for their IDE. It was a mistake for their 6.0 version, and it's still a mistake today.

The project management piece of Zend Studio (which is the most used functionality for me) is still broken, and management of files is still a clustered mess.

Sigh. While there are a small amount of issues with the 5.5.1 build (which is what I STILL use today), these are NOTHING compared to working with 7.0.2.

I hate to say it, but Zend Studio has lost another developer to use their IDE. I'm done. Their 5.x release was so GREAT! It made life so nice! But now they have continued to stick with the failed philosophy of using Eclipse as their engine (which is actually a decent enough engine), but they just cannot seem to make it work with Zend Studio.

I cannot recommend this IDE to anyone, and I definitely cannot justify spending the amount of cash they (Zend) are calling me asking me to purchase for 7.0.2. There is just no way.

I'll continue to use 5.5.1. Unfortunately though, I can only see nothing but doom for Zend's IDE user base, which is really too bad...