>My experience with Java applications is that they are slow and have a terrible, almost impossible to use UI. Some will say the UI is the fault of the developer, but I have used...and continue to use...several Java applications from multiple vendors and stand by my statement.

The observation is spot on. Java's U/I capabilities are hamstrung by its cross-platform capabilities. If you can run anywhere, the U/I will never be any better than the lowest common denominator.

We lived through this with FPD/FPM/FPW/FPU, too, although it was handled considerably better and we had nice GUI tools to handle it for us. The Java tools I've seen & used remain horribly backward.