I downloaded Microsoft's next-generation browser Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 tonight and kind of like it so far. The only immediate complaint I have is how long the installation took - over 15 minutes. I'll have to try it for awhile and see if it makes me want to use it. I use Firefox about 99 percent of the time. The only reason I use I.E. now is for web pages that won't work with Firefox.
Postscript - After a few days of fiddling around with IE 7 - I have to say....
Why?
Why would I use it?
I'm not a rabid anti-Microsoft person. I use many Microsoft products and like them just fine. I'm not sure why Microsoft thinks they need to compete in the browser arena. They are like a slow old dinosaur trying to keep up with open-source nimble gazelle's like Mozilla Firefox.
You can see how much ground Microsoft would have to cover to catch up if you take a look at I.E. 7's add-ons compared to what is available for Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft is depending on people who are trying to make money writing web apps (not a bad thing by itself) but they lose their credibility really fast when they point you to relatively expensive software add-ons that user's rate as junk.
So far I.E. 7 and it's companion Window's live email program have broken my ability to read certain emails (the line breaks don't work). It's either a ploy by Microsoft to force people who use Microsoft Live Mail to use I.E....or really sloppy programing.
I.E. 7 looks sort of cool. compared to the dudley old I.E., but some of the toolbars are frozen in place and ill-placed (for me anyway).
Shortly after I began using I.E. 7 I started to get a full page irritating popup to ilead.itrack.it. I haven't seen anything like that in over a year of using Firefox.
I.E. 7 is a RAM hog. For example I have 7 Firefox windows running right now using 35 Mbytes of RAM. Opening a single window with I.E. 7 chomps up 42 Mbytes.
There's nothing that I can see in I.E. 7 that hasn't already been done in Firefox.
Last but certainly not least - Microsoft has announced the second unpatched IE bug in a week.
Why bother?
