Check out avant (or this other one which im not familiar with). Straight out loading is much much faster. Memory footprint is tighter. Renderings seem (with my poor measurement) to be marginally faster than firefox and much faster than my most recent try at IE7. http://www.avantbrowser.com/awards.html
Well, it's totally just by eye, but I would guess that sites load 20-25% faster in IE 7 than in Firefox (1.5). This may have as much to do with the sites I'm loading - that they are more optimized for IE than Firefox, but it just seems a lot faster. It also seems a great deal faster in doing tasks such as switching tabs. The big thing for me, though, is just memory usage. Firefox is just a memory hog, and it seems to grow uncontrollably. For instance, if I leave Firefox on overnight, I'll come back in the morning and find it has, for no particular reason, suddenly taken up more memory. Lastly, Firefox does not seem to release memory when reduced to the Task bar. In contrast, IE 7 seems to release the memory nicely. Again - a lot of subjectivity here - so you may have different results and opinions.
1. The stability is fine - no problems there. There is an issue with security that I'm concerned about with regard to scripting. For most people, I would suggest that they wait until this is resolved before upgrading, if only because it creates a security problem for anyone accessing banking and/or trading sites. For more info on the issue: http://secunia.com/advisories/22477/ It may be true in IE 6 as well - you can use this page to test for the defect. For now, I continue to use Firefox to access banking sites. 2. You don't have to upgrade to IE 7. The process to upgrade is pretty simple - you go to: http://www.microsoft.com/ie And download the new version - requires a restart.
I tried IE7 a few weeks ago and hated it. Fortunately...how strange...Microsoft actually offered a phone number for their Beta, so I was able to determine how to delete it. When was the last time you actually spoke to a human being at Microsoft? IE7 splits navigation buttons like back, forward, refresh, etc., in different parts of the window. Also refuses to let you put often used links at the bottom of the navigation bar. The bottom is reserved for tabs. Can't change it. Or at least could not in the beta. I also immediately began getting attacked with trojans that forced open windows. All in all a poor experience. And they've been working on this for how long?
Interesting. Avant running on IE7 (nice new interface and does seem to have resolved its slowness) doesn't have the vulnerability. It comes up as a pop-up that Avant blocks.
Don't do it. Read my thread for the problems firsthand. If you use firefox with the new IE 7 latest version there is a major conflict. I had to go back to IE 6 to remove it. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=79182
I don't know why that problem's hit you because mine is just fine. I'm running Avant (primary as fastest), IE7, and firefox (backup). All are latest versions and I have no problems at all.