Hey again,
One thing I noticed in my code (per Matzon's suggestion) was that adding a sleep for even just 1 nano to the painting Thread doubled my framerate (went from 30-40 to 60-80). It doesn't seem to matter how long I sleep either; I get the same benefit all the way up to 10ms where it obviously starts to slip. I've tried running on java 1.4.2_14, 1.5.0_12 and 1.6.0 and I actually get worse framerate on the previous versions. The previous versions all ran relatively better with the sleep added, so that is at least part of the problem. Still, 70-80 is pretty bad considering I can get 400+ using AWT on my work computer with integrated graphics.
Please let me know if you come across something.
-SHAFT