Yeah desktop Java gained a bad reputation because of a bloated JVM and poorly-designed Swing interface.<p>However, if you ship your own JVM and use SWT instead of Swing, most of the problems with using Java on the desktop go away.<p>stephenr - maybe the reason you&#x27;ve only seen crappy Java desktop applications is because you didn&#x27;t recognise the good ones as Java?  For example, here are screenshots of my Java desktop accounting application I&#x27;ve been developing for 9 years:<p>Mac: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.solaraccounts.co.uk&#x2F;images&#x2F;screenshots&#x2F;invoices_mac.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.solaraccounts.co.uk&#x2F;images&#x2F;screenshots&#x2F;invoices_m...</a><p>Windows: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.solaraccounts.co.uk&#x2F;images&#x2F;screenshots&#x2F;invoices.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.solaraccounts.co.uk&#x2F;images&#x2F;screenshots&#x2F;invoices.j...</a><p>Java with SWT uses native widgets and makes it easy to call platform-specific UI code, so the result can be almost identical to a native application.