Main problem is Mac OSX's java is very inefficient (not as good as Sun's java which all other OS's use.) It has memory leaks, has problems releasing memory, etc. As you may or may not know, all OSX programs including the system itself uses Virtual Memory (VM) to temporarily store memory. So for that reason, you need as much space as possible on your system drive. 700 MB or 3 GB is simply not enough.

I moved my iTunes library to an external drive. I moved most of my programs to other internal drives/partition. So that freed up many GB's for my system drive. You can see how much VM programs use by going to Utilities folder, opening Activity Monitor. That will show much much VM & ram & cpu power each one is consuming.

BTW the last version of LW that works on OSX 10.3.9 is LW 4.12.15, as the later versions require Java 1.5 which OSX 10.3 doesn't have.

BBTW I liked the way you worded your post. I was in chuckles over it. Very cute.