Firstly this is not a Java bashing and I don’t preach to say .NET/C++, etc is faster. However, based on what I have seen it sure is slow - slow like a snail. Maybe its the time that takes to load the VM or maybe it Swing - gurk! I like how Andy puts it - “One man’s feature is another man’s bloat”. He has a very objective article on the area which are slow, what Sun is doing to address it and what the main issues (with the developers) are - who don’t know how to use it. He talks about the Memory, JVM, Desktop and Java2D.