Hi Greg!
> Can someone explain why the .; is necessary at all?
If you run java with the -cp option, java uses only the specified paths.
Otherwise it assumes your classes are in the current directory ".". So
you have to include "." in your classpath if that is where your class
files are.
For more information see
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/tooldocs/windows/classpath.html
Sebastian