I'm not sure why this is such a big deal, but I agree with David that using a
StringBuffer everywhere is a waste of time. If you're so worried about using up
memory (which is gc'd anyway) and saving every little clock cycle, then I'm
afraid you've chosen the wrong programming language. StringBuffers make sense
in areas that are used heavily and perform  a lot of string  concatenation or in
loops where string concatenation takes place in the loop. I doubt the
application that the original poster was talking about fits into either of those
categories.