[dhimes]

I use launch4j http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/

You can handle java installation two ways: 1). you can bundle it on a disk, and launch4j will install it [but this defeats the advantage of a java app not needing IT dept approval]; or 2). the user will be directed to Sun's java download page if the appropriate version is not installed. You can specify both an earliest usable version and a latest usable version with launch4j. So if 1.6 broke something, you can specify 1.5 as the latest they can use.