A thanks for clearifying this - I’ve never heard about this behaviour in the past, but I thought it must be something about compatibility 
I still use getScaledInstance because I need to stay 1.1 compatible - and to be honest I don’t know howto archive the same with BufferedImages - and because to archive the smooth-scale effect I would need translucent images I would not get accaleration anyway.
Maybe someone could add another method, or with different parameters getSalesInstance(…, boolean shareBuffer) - so that people don’t use getScaledImage accidentially.
lg Clemens