IE7 will (most likely) be shite when its released cause m'soft almost always release stuff too early, windows 2.0 prolly the best of the lot! windows 3.0 - arrrrg, Win95 first release - shudder, win98 first release - ok but a few major things missing, win2k first release - not too bad (my windows os of choice atm), ie 4 - best not even mention, ie 5 first release - iffy, but not too bad, ie 6 an alter to shiteness (much better now).
Is Firefox better? More Secure? Probably not, and if it is not buy much. I use both because I have to. I find FF marginally more stable, about the same performance and has some really nice extra features which I use all the time. However the main reason I use FF over IE is because as with most other software from Microsoft when it crashes it ****ing well takes the machine with it 5-10% of the time (under win2k) which I suspect is because developers inside microsoft dont always use their own guidlines for windows programming cause they dont have to. Now I dont care if the crash is cause by a poor browser or a poorly written web app. IE itself and the underlying OS are the responsibility of the same company and the first should not be able to crash the second. And before you ask, yes I keep upto date with patches, both OS and browser and drivers and BIOSs etc etc etc ....
I cant remember the last time a browser managed to crash anything other than itself on any of the other OSs I use. There is simply no excuse for this kind of application behaviour.
Unny