I was going to say that maybe it's just my old laptop not liking it, but your laptop specs are worse :-O

Windows doesn't seem to like Java very much in general, that's probably why it felt a bit sluggish to use and ate up a ton of memory. In fact, I don't think Windows gets along with any Java apps I've seen... One of these days I might back all the junk up from that laptop and see how much it likes linux...