If you're complaining about the memory usage, lower the max heap size with the arguments: -Xms512m -Xmx512m. If it's CPU usage: turn off some of those addons. You can't say Java 7 is the root cause of the CPU usage and not Eclipse.

It's meant to run on a server i think, reducing memory so it's laptop friendly probably was not a driving feature

Plus Java feels like it has a target painted on its back by malware authors these days.