As people start installing Version 6.1 clients, we're starting to get a
lot of problems and complaints about the new Java GUI Client.

1. If you don't have your Java configuration just right, it won't work
at all. I've gotten quite tired of coaching users through untangling
their Java setups which were imposed upon them by some other Java app. I
thought the idea of Java was to make things less dependent on the
underlying environment of OS, drivers, and hardware, but it's the
opposite. It's really very delicate, and dependent on everything else.

2. It's sloooooow. So slow on many systems that you don't know if you
clicked on something or not, so you click again. Bad things can happen
when you do this. Even if nothing bad happens, it is still maddeningly
sluggish. Twice the time to go through a wizard, such as to set up a
scheduler. This is on a pretty fast new-ish machine running Vista Pro,
as well as on an older XP machine, and a brand-new Win7 netbook.

So I'm about to alter our installation scripts and documentation to
create shortcuts to dsmmfc.exe - the old native non-Java GUI. Until I
get this ironed out, we are only recommending the v6.1 client for
Windows 7 users. We eagerly await the promised availability in 1H2010 of
a v5.5 client that supports Windows 7. In the V6 client, IBM should
continue to support dsmmfc.exe and update it as new features are added,
perhaps even making it the default GUI client again. It just simply
works better.

Roger Deschner      University of Illinois at Chicago     rogerd AT uic DOT edu
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