Timer & TimerTask versus Thread + sleep in Java

Question

I found similar questions asked here but there weren't answers to my satisfaction. So rephrasing the question again-

I have a task that needs to be done on a periodic basis (say 1 minute intervals). What is advantage of using Timertask & Timer to do this as opposed to creating a new thread that has a infinite loop with sleep?

Code snippet using timertask-

TimerTask uploadCheckerTimerTask = new TimerTask(){   public void run() {   NewUploadServer.getInstance().checkAndUploadFiles();  } };  Timer uploadCheckerTimer = new Timer(true); uploadCheckerTimer.scheduleAtFixedRate(uploadCheckerTimerTask, 0, 60 * 1000); 

Code snippet using Thread and sleep-

Thread t = new Thread(){  public void run() {   while(true) {    NewUploadServer.getInstance().checkAndUploadFiles();    Thread.sleep(60 * 1000);   }  } }; t.start(); 

I really don't have to worry if I miss certain cycles if the execution of the logic takes more than the interval time.

Please comment on this..

Update:
Recently I found another difference between using Timer versus Thread.sleep(). Suppose the current system time is 11:00AM. If we rollback the system time to 10:00AM for some reason, The Timer will STOP executing the task until it has reached 11:00AM, whereas Thread.sleep() method would continue executing the task without hindrance. This can be a major decision maker in deciding what to use between these two.

Answer 1

The advantage of TimerTask is that it expresses your intention much better (i.e. code readability), and it already has the cancel() feature implemented.

Note that it can be written in a shorter form as well as your own example:

Timer uploadCheckerTimer = new Timer(true); uploadCheckerTimer.scheduleAtFixedRate(     new TimerTask() {       public void run() { NewUploadServer.getInstance().checkAndUploadFiles(); }     }, 0, 60 * 1000);