I always set the thread priority to min else the applet will hog to much os time when the applet is not focus on WinNT / Win2K boxs.
And then just make empty update / paint methods and grab store a Graphics ( g_ref = this.getGraphics )reference in the applet init() method to use for drawing to the applet canvas, and when image builder store use an MemoryImageSource and newPixels the image (and if you are not using the alpha channel which is done by dither and looks ugly use a color mode that is only 24 bit ( DirectColorModel cmr_img_cm = new DirectColorModel(32,0xff0000,0xff00,0xff); ) and use that when you create the MemoryImageSource and the image gets built about 30% faster!
hope that helps....


