All Browsers have security issue some more than others , IE..Mozilla..Firefox...Netscape..K-Meleon., all have quirks.. IE has more security problems as more are being used and most hackers go after it. Alot of its problems can be addressed but several can not. Browsers are a matter of personal taste, what OS, internet connection, Hardware, and how often maintenance is performed.If a persons likes a browser then it's a good browser for them. I don't use IE as I like a tabbed browser, IE also has a pretty hefty footprint. For some reason folks seem to thinks that Maxthon and other browsers like it are real browser, they are not, they add another layer to IE. Most computers today are pretty fast so the extra layer doesn't effect speed that one can notice. For those folks that think this is a real browser remove IE and see how much surfing they can do. As for Opera I really don't care for it all that much as some pages don't show as intended and it has some prblems downloading files on some sites. Netscape has a pretty large footprint though it performs well. Mozilla and Firefox are basically the same browser with Firefox being a basic version. K-Meleon is interesting, fast and has a footprint smaller than Opera but it's a pain to tweak. My pesonal choice is Firefox. Firefox has it's problems too but I can live with them..I did try Maxthon and at the moment it's having all kinds of problems though the programmer seems to be working hard on them. If IE intergrated tabs I'd more than not switch as I have SP2 installed and the firewall (though basic) does an OK job and the popup blocker is quite good.
Browsers are like cars everone likes what the like....so just enjoy the web
cheers

you don't know nothing .... FF weights in at 6 mb ... IE is 60 MB ... and IE is optimized for windows only, whereas FF is linux, mac, windows ... can be so blind?

"The time has come to dump Internet Explorer. I know, I know — you may have heard the same thing before from those that think it's cool to hate Microsoft; but I'm not one of those guys. I'm actually an MCSE and I happen to like quite a few of Microsoft's products. Rather than lump me into the Microsoft-basher category, consider for a moment why you use the browser you use, and humor me by entertaining the notion — if even for a second — that switching to another might be worth your while... My argument is simple: the benefits of using IE are too few - and the faults too great — to put off the adoption of an alternative any longer ... I ask that you consider these points and pull down a copy of Firefox, Opera, or another alternative browser. Run it for a week and see how it feels. As mentioned above, I personally recommend Firefox due to its excellent development team and large user base. Once you have had some time to get to know your new onramp to the web, I think you’ll find that you’ll wish you had switched sooner. No longer will you have to worry about garbage clogging up your system because of your browser, or having to make a mad rush for a patch every time an IE vulnerability is released ... Finally, and most importantly - spread the word. It’s time now for us to put alternative browsers on the map and let it be known that we are aware of our choices. We need not settle for what we are being fed when there are better, more secure alternatives out there."

"Mozilla, in case you didn't know, is a project to build an open source web browser (Firefox) and email suite (Thunderbird). I had cause to use it recently when I ran into a little browser plug-in (from a security company called CoreStreet) that plays back to you the name of the web site that you are on. ... However, the initial (test) version of this applet was created for the Mozilla Firefox browser rather than Internet Explorer so I had to download the browser in order to try it out. So I did. It took me a whole five minutes to decide to ditch Internet Explorer and switch to Firefox. Why? The learning curve is about 5 minutes - at most. FireFox is simpler to use. Configuring it is easy and would probably be easy for just about any PC user. You are not faced with the typical Microsoft feature-bloat. Mozilla Firefox has a better layout and a larger web page area. It loads all your Internet Explorer 'favorites' when you install it on MS Windows and blocks pop-ups completely (there is an option to allow them on specific sites). That's it. Goodbye Internet Explorer, hello Firefox. The clincher was blocking pop-ups. My web surfing experience has now improved 200 percent. I had previously downloaded a plug-in for Internet Explorer that was supposed to stop pop-ups but some got through. Now none get through unless I let them. In any event, I have come to believe that Mozilla is going to fly. It's not really about Open Source, it's about product quality. The pop-up invasion went on too long. Spam has gone on too long. Someone should be talking to the users and someone in Mozilla obviously is."

"So stop complaining and choose a better browser ... Trust me on this — I’m no knee-jerk open source bigot. During Mozilla’s long nuclear winter, I stuck with IE because I wasn’t willing to live with compromises. Then the tables turned. Suddenly, IE was the compromise I could not live with. Bugs didn’t get fixed. Standards support didn’t improve. New features didn’t appear. And the last vestige of cross-platform ambition evaporated when IE for the Mac was killed last year. The message is clear: Internet Explorer is dead in the water. Firefox does more, it’s moving faster, and — here’s the kicker — it runs identically on Windows, OS X, and Linux. On each of these platforms, I enjoy a state-of-the-art end-user experience. Tabbed browsing, search plug-ins, and pop-up blocking are the headline features. But there are wonderful small touches, too. My favorite is “Find as You Type,� a built-in incremental search that finds text on the current page as soon as you start typing it. IE is arguably good enough for the 95 percent who continue to use it for basic browsing. But browser-based rich Internet software isn’t nearly as good as it could be. If you build it, they will come."

"The latest version of Firefox, has a more professional look, online help, and a tool that automatically imports your bookmarks, history, site passwords, and other settings from Explorer. Meanwhile, all-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. ... The problem is that hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer. Many of them take advantage of Explorer's ActiveX system, which lets Web sites download and install software onto visitors' computers, sometimes without users' knowledge. ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it's become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs. That's why the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership between the tech industry and Homeland Security, recently took the unusual step of advising people to consider switching browsers."

"Three things: first, this last year has seen a series of well-publicised security issues with IE coincide with the maturation of the various alternatives to IE. This results in many people moving to systems such as Firefox, prompted invariably by news reports, good reviews or the recommendations of friends. ... Second, that very maturation has come as the developers of alternative browsers have been concentrating on the support of openly developed standards. Instead of developing things in-house and dropping them on a previously unsuspecting opposition, Microsoft's rivals are working with each other to implement public standards from bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). ... With only one major upgrade since 1999, IE is far behind the curve on web technology. Futhermore, according to Microsoft, the next overhaul of IE will accompany the launch of the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, which won't be available until at least 2006."