My first LAZARUS experience was 0.9.3 or something like that if I remember right. I couldn't get the IDE to run stable on my computer, I encountered a lot of crashes. On the other side the IDE looked a lot like DELPHI and to get all this for free (OPEN SOURCE) was a little bit unexpected and very nice. It felt like getting a FREE-PHOTOSHOP version...
The next version I tried was 1.2.4 and that was really a total different thing:
1. very fast and stable install
2. no problems at all, but I didn't had much time so I couldn't play around much...
What I like about LAZARUS:
1. Very easy and fast install (WINDOWS). I really like the SECONDARY-Installation...
2. The IDE starts very fast... very nice
3. Very good forum where people tell you a lot of things even if the topic is about something else, very helpful...
4. The moderators are very relaxed if it comes to OFF-TOPIC-POSTS compared to other forums. I like that.
5. There are so much OPEN SOURCE-Libraries out there that I can use with LAZARUS or FREE PASCAL... very nice
6. It's very easy to use DELPHI-Code with LAZARUS, at least in my case...
7. LAZARUS runs fine on my old "P4" and "Celeron M430" computer.
8. I always find something useful inside the IDE that I didn't recognize before...
Of course this is only the point of view of a beginner and always will be like that due to lack of time, but that's ok...