> of being a lightweight, platform agnostic target
A little late for that. I see that my Chrome browser is currently using 2.66GB of RAM (for about 40 tabs, or about 65M per tab). I remember when I first started using Java, my whole computer only had 8M of RAM, and while it has gotten larger, I think it is still considerably lighter weight than a web app, despite also giving much richer APIs and multi-threading. The advantage of web apps isn't that they're lighter weight from a systems resource point of view, but lighter weight from a user's effort in installing and using the app, point of view (now that Applets are gone).
A little late for that. I see that my Chrome browser is currently using 2.66GB of RAM (for about 40 tabs, or about 65M per tab). I remember when I first started using Java, my whole computer only had 8M of RAM, and while it has gotten larger, I think it is still considerably lighter weight than a web app, despite also giving much richer APIs and multi-threading. The advantage of web apps isn't that they're lighter weight from a systems resource point of view, but lighter weight from a user's effort in installing and using the app, point of view (now that Applets are gone).