Download the latest JDK release
here for the approriate platform and follow the instructions provided by the installation wizard.
I'd recommend you not choose the default installation path for Windows operating systems (i.e sub directory of "Program Files"), but that you pick a simple Java base directory for the JDK installation and your future Java projects (e.g
C:\Java) and install the JDK there. Where ever you decide to install the JDK, that path will be your
JAVA_HOME location, which
you should add to system environment variables. I'm not on a Vista machine right now, but you can access the environment variables as an option somewhere under System Properties, which you can get to by pressing the Windows/Start key and the Pause/Break key simultaneously. Add a new key/value pair where the key should be
JAVA_HOME and the value should be the path to the JDK root e.g
C:\Java\jdk1.6.0_17. While your playing around with environment variables anyway, you should edit the
PATH variable (or create it if it doesn't exist) and append the path to the
bin sub directory of the JDK to it:
JAVA_HOME\bin. Notice you can refer to the
JAVA_HOME variable here, which is extremely convenient.
That's basically all you need to setup for now. If you want to check the installation just open up a command prompt anywhere and type in
java -version which should print something like:
java version "1.6.0_17"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_17-b01)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 14.2-b01, mixed mode, sharing)
Edit: Ugh, too slow.