It's a personal preference thing, like iOS vs. Android. ;)
I prefer the Java console, because I don't have to add every PC I use as a valid server to my master server properties in order to use it. I've had 3 different PC's in the past 3 years, so that's a bit of a pain to have to keep track of them.
The Windows Backup, Archive, Restore is integrated into the Java GUI instead of a separate program, and seems to be considerably faster at locating files in large file system backups. And I dislike the green/blue dot interface for selecting backup images in the Windows GUI.
The library topology in the Windows GUI is neat to look at, but I've never had a real reason in the past 5 years to make any use of it, even at my previous job where we had 30+ media servers, 2 robots, and 80+ tape drives.
The filter function JH mentions is not a problem for me, I use the Advanced filter to narrow down my selections.
The Java console can also be run from a Unix system, too, and the interface is then consistent across both OS's.
The Java console can be finicky about memory settings and such, though. And the window can sometimes leave artifacts on screen like a partially updated section of the Java GUI window. I just close and reopen it and all is well. And I can't always copy/paste a listing from the Java GUi to another program. But I work around that by exporting the list to the default export1.txt name and using Excel to open that.
