Also, auto-updates (or for that matter, manual update checks from within the app) are, or at least used to be, very late relative to when there's an update available. I gave up on letting Java check when I found that far too often, it was as much as 2 weeks after someone posted notification here in the Updates topic that Java itself found the update.
Now that the one and only site I regularly visit that used to require it has switched from Java to script, I've totally uninstalled Java from my system.