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Pictured above is E*Trade’s Marketcaster Java applet. It provides real-time streaming stock market quotes. Or, at least, that’s what it is supposed to do. I took the screenshot above after having waited for about 5 mins …

Java applets were cool when they first hit the web, but since then a lot of other technologies have surfaced and Java never managed to keep pace with the development around it.
For the last few years Java applets were nothing but a nuisance to me. My success rate with Java applets is at around 10% – 90% of the time the applet does not initialize correctly (see above) or bombs out with one or another exception. Add to that long load times, the fact that the virus scanner goes bonkers (using most of the CPU) whenever the applet’s JARs are being loaded and you end up with unusable technology.
And, no, I’m not using some outdated JRE – even Sun’s – oops – Java’s own Java Test page gives me two big thumbs up.

[Update]
PS: Add to the list of annoyances above: “Blank Java Security Warning dialogs that require a browser kill” – as it happened a minute ago on www.thinkfree.com …