I think VBO is very important for performance, and JOGL can fully supports it !
This is the LWJGL forum, so I wouldn't consider it very helpful to tell someone to tell them to switch to a different library. How about trying to answer his questions instead?
elias, I haven't ventured in to VBOs too much yet, but I have a solid vertex array implementation working. I think this would be a good starting place for you, because VBOs are very similar to VAs, simply a few more calls to enable the VBO. As for your question about mixing primitives in an array, I *think* it can work. You wouldn't be able to draw all of the different polygons, in one draw call, because the draw call takes a parameter to indicate which type. So basically you'd draw a range of the array using the call with GL_TRIANGLES where they are triangles, or GL_QUADS where they are quads.