SE means Standard Edition, EE means Enterprise Edition, and ME means Micro Edition. In general, EE is for advanced server-side programming, and ME is for small devices like cell phones. You want the Standard Edition (J2SE).
There are a few different versions of J2SE available. The current version is 5.0 (which is the same as "1.5"). Sun's download page for J2SE 5.0 is...
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp On this page, you will see several options:
On the upper left is "NetBeans IDE + JDK 5.0 Update 7." You do not need the NetBeans IDE, so there is no need to download this one.On the upper right is "Java EE 5." You probably do not need the Enterprise Edition either, so there is no need to download this one.Underneath these two is "JDK 5.0 Update 7." This is the one you want. Click on the link to "Download JDK 5.0 Update 7," and then select the one for your operating system. After downloading, follow the installation instructions exactly.After you've installed Java,
test it with a
Hello World application.