[tubedogg]

If you are looking for a good code editor, there are two I recommend.

First is EditPlus...it's not the prettiest thing ever but it does the job, and it has lots of advanced features if you need them, plus the basics like syntax highlighting etc. It's not free ($25 I think?) but it's worth it.

The other is PHP Designer 2005 which is more of an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). It's pretty nifty, and it has great syntax highlighting options, FTP support, and lots more. One thing I really like is if you type in a function name plus the first parantheses, if it's a built-in PHP function it will show you the various parameters in a tooltip, like Visual Studio does for its' various languages. It's more of a "pretty" windows app and therefore is a little slower than the no-frills EditPlus. The one thing I wish it would do that EditPlus does is searching across multiple files. Hopefully in a future version. This one is free.

As far as a computer, you do *not* need a powerful computer for development. The only things you'll really be doing is using a text editor, some web browser windows/tabs, and a media player if you like to listen to music while coding. It's not at all taxing on a system. A fast internet connection isn't needed either, since you're developing on your local machine. The only time the connection matters is when you're uploading stuff to your web server -- but you can do everything on your local box that you can on your server basically, so that will only happen when you're ready to publish to the web.

Screen real estate...it depends. PHP Designer 2005 is very much like Visual Studio with all the panels and stuff. EditPlus is not, and most of what is there can be turned off for most of the time. I personally develop with two screens, EditPlus on one (a 15" I believe) and my web browser on the other (a 21").