OK, Rephrasing the Questions - Something New

[Simon Bowring]

>> pay the very heavy memory resource usage and slow load time penalties 
>> that Java introduces.
>
>    Are we loaded yet?  Nope, more cawfee!
Since most people keep their email client running 24x7, this is less of 
an issue provided you have enough RAM in the first place (128Mb 
is my personal *absolute minimum* recommendation, 256Mb or more is
better!).

As far as run time perfromance goes, Java is in the same ball-park as C
for most purposes and is sometimes much faster (and sometimes slower).
However Java is so much more rich in terms of standard library 
functionality than *any* other standard programming environment, so 
programs take much less time to write.

See http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?article_id=153 for various
benchmarks/graphs of GCC, MSC and Java.  Java can even sometimes beat 
the very best (and most "dangerous") optimisation levels in both C 
compilers!

Simon