Simon,

try WebSphere and you will be glad to use Tomcat.

Dieter

If you want Tomcat with a fancy user interface, look at Borland
Enterprise Server Web Edition.

Basically, if you want "easy to setup and use" you probably need to
buy a commercial container. Open-source solutions generally don't have
the "customer pressure" to make things more easy than the developers
themselves need it to be.

Simon,

What exactly is giving you problems?  From a single user's standpoint, I
find Tomcat is reasonably easy to setup and use.  Multiple independent
developers using a single Tomcat instance can get a little tricky, but
using virtual hosts helps a lot.

Alternatively you could have your students use an IDE such as Eclipse or
NetBeans.  Both have an internal Tomcat server that will allow your
students to develop and debug.  However, if you find Tomcat difficult to
set up, running Tomcat under Eclipse or NetBeans can be a bit of a pain.

I can post generic instructions on getting non-administrator accounts set
up with Tomcat.  Doing something a bit fancier takes a small amount of
effort, and I would be willing to post that as well.

/mde/
just my two cents . . . .