I've used Java a lot and rely on StringBuffers. I have never had any trouble with them.

What version of Java, what system? Sun...ah...doesn't exactly shine in software. I'm Mac based but we have Windoze versions of our software. We ship the IBM vm (1.1.8) with the code to be sure we know there is one on the target machine and that we know which one we are running under. IBM's 1.1.8 is faster than Sun's piece of trash. I'm unsure about 1.2 and 1.3. We're only getting to 1.3 now (skipping 1.2) since we now run MacOSX and it has 1.3...at least that is what it claims....haven't verified that yet.