One of the oldest Browsers on the market and by far the most widely used, Internet Explorer has in recent years been chastised as old and clunky, a bit beyond it's sell by date and passed by the new boys of the browsing world. Like Microsoft it's self it's been seen as too slow to alter to the changes going on around it's self and had found that things like Firefox and Chrome biting into it's market share as it lazed about thinking it was untouchable. Internet users had started to look elsewhere, why would they stay with a slow and cumbersome beast when they could easily streamline everything and cut out the vast chunks of risk associated with using the internet?

With the growth of Firefox people started to look elsewhere, all we heard of IE was that it was flawed, it was full of exploits and was easy to hack, security was the problem and that is one thing no one wants to put at risk. It was said Firefox "Didn't have any", and was completely safe as well Firefox was quicker and introduced tabbed browsing and extensions. Firefox was the David taking on the Microsoft Goliath and we all like a David tale, so many of us joined in and swiftly Firefox was on the way up.
What many didn't realise was the reason there wasn't any viruses and trojans on Firefox was because there was no point, when there is so few users there no appeal to hack into the program, with the boom in the browser their was also a boom in trojans.

The complains about speed were all fair, it's still the one that seems to run the slowest of what is considered the top 4 (Opera, Chrome, Firefox and IE) and it's doubtful that this is going to change any time soon. Chrome has been streamlined for speed as opposed to features so will obviously dominate that until people use the open source of Opera and Firefox and find tricks. However despite the fact IE does seems like it's slower, it's not usually a problematic slow down in the version on my laptop (currently using IE7.0.6001.180000), and those complaining about ¼ or so of a second are being foolish. Yes it adds up over a day, however if your using tabbed browsing (which this version incorporates) then why not use that lag to use an alternative tab? People will tell you that if you browse 1000 pages a day them ¼ of a seconds add up (to 250 seconds, about 4 minutes), but why not use that time to read something that you opened before? If your like me you'll often often have background tabs running things like live sports scores (or share prices, conversion rates), a music player (BBC radio for example), a search engine and 2 other "active" tabs. Use that ¼ of a second to check your shares/scores simple it's why your using tabs and not windows.
Yes Firefox (and Opera) did it first, but Microsoft moved with the times and got in on the act at last, so lets give credit there.

A personal complaint with Firefox is it's a ram hog often building up it's usage to the point where you need to close it, Opera also seems to occasionally have that problem. Chrome takes the Mick and opens it's self as a new task for every tab which is irritating and a CPU (not RAM) abuser often needing to be sorted through the task manager. Guess which browser doesn't seem to have that problem? And also doesn't seem to be having a problem with any of the sites I use...oh that's right, Internet Explorer.

Now whilst it's sounding like this is great and perfect, lets put the brakes on and admit it is still the most likely to get penetrated by a virus or a trojan horse and the Active X controls are irritating. The browser also suffers much worse than Chrome and Opera with regards to pop ups which is a problem most people would rather do with out full stop. In modern times more and more websites are being optimised for Firefox which means that IE could have problems with them in the future, which some sites stopping support for the older versions of IE altogether. As well as the problems that have been apparent with IE version 8 which has been a generally difficult browser to get anything from in a positive way and almost impossible to get rid of.

Yes it's not my favourite browser, it's lacking the things I've become used to (gestures, the wand and the auto search) but it's still a more sound and complete browser than many of the others. The bigwigs at Mircrosoft have seen the challenge form the young guns and vastly improve their product between IE6 and IE7 so give credit where it's due, sadly with IE8 being a pain I won't be testing that any time soon. Most modern computers do come with this as well so you'll almost certainly have to use it at some point (even if it is just to download another browser) and thankfully it's not as problematic as I remember it being. The few problems are things that are lacking (extensions for those that are bothered, gestures and no auto search bar), which can in some cases be sorted (the google search toolbar) but on the whole some will put some people off, that's just the way it is. On the whole it is solid and dependable, sure it's not sex or attractive, but it will get the job done and there's not much more you can ask.