Well, I’d definitely say that it’s worth having the same setup as your peers, all the nuances have been figured out and everyone can work together towards a common goal.
Most of the guys are using a Linux desktop with Ubuntu installed (as am I) which avoids having to use any virtual machines to run apache etc. MySQL Workbench handles all the DDL and DML you’re tasked with and NetBeans IDE for your PHP and Javascript.
NetBeans for me is a great tool over Aptana’s offering I started out with; I find it much more focused, especially with the SVN integration. Viewing the annotations on the line numbers are great to find out who has worked on different sections of the code.