Tried NetBeans couple of months ago. Seems promising, but there was not any support for SFTP then so it was not useful for me.
i'd go for vim and win explorer for a noob, i'd recommend aptana.com (as that has good syntax highlighting and code hinting)
Using Notepad++ also. i used to deal only with notepad before both of them take alot more resources .. not recommended to people who have less than 1 GB ram
notepad++ .. free and so powerfull with syntax highlight and many features, make your coding easier regards
I use Notepad ++ here and its awesome. If you want to go for a more premium alternative check out dreamweaver by Adobe