I have spend quite a number of hours already with D4php and this is what
I believe

The IDE is one if the best I have used so far. It has almost all the
goodies you would expect from a decent IDE. and imho, that alone is
worth the price. I have wasted more money and hours on so-called php ide
(including Zend Studio) that I care to count. There are a few
shortcomings but this is only a v1.0. José is obviously keen to have a
very good editor and the team has been putting a lot of efforts during
the past weeks to improve it. So I am very positive about it.

the VCL part: you like it or not, you can use it or not. In my case I do
not think I can use it. At least in its present state (but this part is
open sourced, so wait and see) and may be with a completely new project

BUT the ide, like Delphi, allows you to create your own objects and this
is where it becomes, IMHO, very sexy because for the 1st time you can
tailor a php ide to suit YOUR needs and fit YOUR way of programming and
that is a killer feature.

Didier