See the topic
Choosing an implementation from the Collections chapter of Eckel's
Thinking in Java. (And note that it says, "Hashtable, Vector, and Stack ... are legacy classes, so that old code doesn't break. ...it�s best if you don't use those for new code." In general, use an ArrayList in place of a Vector.)
In comparing ArrayList to LinkedList, you will see (for example) that an ArrayList allows for fast random access, while a LinkedList allows for fast insertions and deletions from the middle.