Disclaimer:
This is only one example of how ASP.NET is better than Java. There might be several reasons that Java is better than ASP.NET. These are just my views of a particular situation. I do believe though that ASP.NET for web applications is better source than Java on a Windows machine.

Ok, where I work we are about to switch over to clocking in at our desk instead of going to a designated spot and clocking in and out. This is a good thing to have happen because it will help on productivity because people can work right up to closing time then clock out without having to walk somewhere. This will save money because people won't be as likely to idle around waiting for time to finish they can keep working. This is a plus to this system, but that is not what I am going to talk about.

This little application that we use is a web based application. It is hosted on a server in our intranet so that all you have to do is go to a web address anywhere in the company and you can clock out. However the problem is, in my opinion, that it is running a Java applet. While this may not be bad to the general user that doesn't care; It annoys the heck out of me because it takes so long to load and I know of a more efficient way of doing it.

You see what happens is the computer calls the server and the server loads up the web application and the clients browser sees that there is a java applet. So it then calls on the runtime to interpret and run this applet. This takes quite a bit of time, I have clocked it at 5 seconds. While this may not seem like a lot on a large scale this can is a lot of wasted time, and waste of resources because the applet has to run on the clients machine.

Another problem with running the java applet is that the IT department must now spend quite a bit of time going to every computer and installing the java runtime. With a company at well over 100 computers this is an all day project. Not to mention you have to make sure that no one is at the computer, or you have to waste a Saturday coming in and installing it. This will cost a the company money because not only does the company have to pay for the time to get it installed on a computer, but they have to worry about headaches that may arise if he misses a computer or something happens to the runtime, though rare can happen.

Now if the company were to use ASP.NET then it would save time in many ways. Not only would the development life cycle be shorter, but the IT department would not have to go around to the computers and install the java runtime, saving a significant amount of time. What does this mean. Well the application can be cheaper, and you don't have to pay people to waste time installing a runtime.

With ASP.NET it will display the same thing to you that the java applet will, but run it completely off of the server so that the users browser only has to read the HTML. This is a significant performance advantage because only one program is doing something. Also with the way that IIS 6.0 processes ASP.NET pages there is almost no strain, if any, on the server when running the application.

With significant performance gains lower Total Cost of Ownership of a intranet based web application you can tell that ASP.NET is a better way to go in this case. I hope that maybe I helped you learn something today. Again these are my views enjoy.