Interesting, I’ve found the opposite. In the last couple of years I’ve had a HP, Dell, Compaq and Toshiba pass through each with Java installed previously. Admitedly, its an odd install - inside the windows system32 folder - but its there and it works.
Either way, GCJ! GCJ! GCJ! (etc)
Kev
I’ve only had one complaint about JWS, which was from a Linux minded developer obviously heavily biased against anything java. Well, I couldn’t care less tbh.
OTOH, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from especially non-techy people who said they use and like the JWS JEmu2 because they just don’t know how to install MAME.
Now I agree that MAME may be an extremely geeky example but still I think a lot of people, especially the non-techy people, seem to like JWS. They’re used to clicking a link on a web page, and sometimes maybe even more so than going through install shields.
Of course many things can be improved and I’m not denying that there might still be an acceptance problem, but it already works and it already achieved the goal of user friendlyness.
Another rather important reason why I use JWS is because I always want to feel in control over the version everyone is running because it helps keeping online high score tables clean. I suppose this is even more important with MMORPGs or other online games.
yup gotta agree all the newbiees i’ve met all love java webstart, just so easy to use, especially if you don’t wanna bother with the hassle to download, installing an app all over again on a different computer. Dreads installing apps on linux(not to bad once u know how) , and with the new Vista model copying the linux security model, apps should be harder to install on that too!
however sun do need to get a better to get the jre on top ppls computers, flash does a good job of making the install a snap, however it is also much smaller. Something like a lightweight java install which slowly updates it self in small bursts until it becomes a full jre would be nice.
also atm the way java updates it is really not nice, it redownloads a whole jre even if its a small bug fix or something, sun really need to modularise it up a bit to allow smaller updates.
Dmitri Trembovetski just made a comment a related comment in this thread:
I wonder why the Sun webstart demos don’t use this install URL then? :-\ I did actually try JGF on that machine but couldn’t launch anything. Clicking ‘play’ or similar would take me in circles back & forth between the popular games list & the specific game page… I’ll look into it further.