Joe, This was a very helpful post; thank you. I've posted some detailed comments about this topic on The Internet Stock Blog at: http://www.internetstockblog.com/2005/08/the_browser_war.html and would greatly appreciate your comments on them.

The first thing I noticed was that IE7 had wiped-out my Cookie folder. Because cookies have caused me trouble, I always opened up the cookie folder located in: C: / Documents and settings/ user/ Cookies. But the folder is no longer there, I ran a search and it came up with nothing. WHAT HAPPEN TO MY COOKIE FOLDER? I would delete cookies as I browsed the web using All-in-one secretmaker. One click on; “Initialize all cleaners” and bye bye cookies. I don't know if cookies are really gone now or what. I just did a scan with ZoneAlarm and the cookie Ads.addynamix was found, that is why I like to see which cookies a present and when so I can delete them when I want. I hate this!! Two: the tool at the top of IE7 are not as handy, there in drop down menus on the right side of the browser and I loved IE6, when I wanted to save a web page to the desktop I would click; file/ send copy to desktop. Now I have to go to the drop down page menu and click save, then click where “in desktop” then save. This may not be the biggest thing in the world, but just is more time and less handy. The whole feel is a bit off. A lot of work that hasn’t shown much improvement if you as me. Hopefully security has been improved as much as Microsoft has claimed. Until I find out what happen to the Cookie folder I am just not going to trusted IE7!

I experienced sultiple crashes of the program itself, not the system. Using Ghost, I uninstalled it within 48 hours and returned to pre-IE7 state.

Perhaps better to leave the operating system files protected and go to the IE7 Tools menu -> Internet Options -> General Tab -> Browsing history -> Settings section -> [View Files...] button. You can see everything here, and can manipulate cookies as well.

What happened to the menu bar? Why would they hide it by default? I know you can set it to display all the time but why should hidden be the default? To pin favorites on the side you have to click 2 places now. I don't understand the trend to make things look prettier at the expense of ease of use.

The interface is a nightmare. Where's the menu bar? Switched off? Egads - usability taking severla thousand paces backwards. I can't even download IE6 anymore to get rid of IE7!!!

IE7 is a joke. I recommend anyone who has a real network with real applications that have to actually perform for mission critical reasons avoid IE7 at all cost. the thing is full of flaky bugs, and is so imbedded into the OS that it makes it flake out as well. I dont care what anyone from Microsoft says, web browsers are supposed to be light weight and they for sure arent supposed to be so deeply embedded into the OS that you cant remove them or remove updated version to them. Microsux has had this issue forever and they didnt even build the first releases of IE anyway so they probably dont even know that it behaves the way it does. If anyone is having weird issues across a network and cant seem to pin point it, my suggestion would be to download Firefox or something of that nature. Your over the wire Apps will just magically work..