The Most Basic Development Environment

Hi, guys. I'm new to the community, but not to Drupal. I've built a few basic sites using Drupal 6 and 7.

This seems like the best of my forum options for this question, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm getting ready to build a web app for my company. It will be a project management app geared towards the nuances of boarding-and-training hunting dogs. I will be using Organic Groups, Panels, Views, Rules and some other modules ... and I'm sure some of my own code and modifications. (I tried the Drupal PM module, but it isn't really what I want, so I decided to roll my own.)

I need to get the basic project management parts of the site up and running fairly quickly, but there are several features I'd like to add post-launch. Also, there will be some other people using my web app, so I want to be sure I add features in a way that doesn't break things or lose data.

So, I am looking to set up a simple development environment. I'm on a Windows machine and have tried EasyPHP and a WAMP stack. However, I find that these are ungodly slow for some reason that does not pertain to the quality and speed of my equipment. Some google searching seems indicate the problem has something to do with IPv6 lookups or something like that. The fixes I've found online do not work (not running through a firewall, typing in the localhost ip address directly (127.00.1) rather than making the system resolve "localhost/...", making some networking modifications via command prompt. None of them have worked. But there is indication online that Drupal doesn't play well with Windows development environments, and I don't have the inclination to switch back to Linux. Finally, I have tried gotpantheon.com, and I've not been able to get a decent, error-free install on it yet.

I am not a developer (in fact, I am a hunting dog trainer), but I am pretty computer literate and once worked in the tech industry, so I've got a good idea of what I want and how to go about it.

So, my question is: What might be the most basic development environment I could set up using Windows. I'd like to be able to upgrade or change the environment later if my needs require it. But for now, I just need to get past these Windows/Drupal issues I'm running into and get to work.

I'm not at all opposed to working in the cloud if there is a good online development environment that works well with Drupal.

Thank you in advance for your input.

Best Regards,
Tom