There is significant performance difference between application with a number of Swing JTable cells when running in a standalone JFrame or in (J)Applet. After some investigation, the root cause was found:

BasicTableUI.paintCell->CellRendererPane.paintComponent->Container.validate->Component.updateCursorImmediatly->GlobalCursorManager.updateCursorImmediatly()->_updateCursor....

updateCursorImmediately() takes about 20% of EDT calls which is pretty inefficient. However, when running inside an applet, it takes up to 50% of the time because of the next call:

XEmbeddedFramePeer.getLocationOnScreen()->XBaseWindow.toGlobal()->XEmbeddedFramePeer.getAbsoluteX/Y()->XlibUtil.translateCoordinates()