The deprecated methods are considered as "legacy" methods. More:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/javadoc/deprecation/deprecation.html The deprecated methods can indeed be removed in any time, but the chance to be removed is very small (e.g something huge like standard java library), in order to maintain backward compatibility. It is very useful if you code for a client whose branch offices run different versions of Java (one may have the Java 5, other perhaps Java 1.2, and so on). For optimal performance, etc you shouldn't use the deprecated methods though.