IE7's anti-phishing tool is a clear winner, and goes a long way toward keeping naive users safe from phishing attacks. It stops people from visiting scam Web sites masquerading as real ones -- for example, a site designed to look exactly like PayPal or a bank, but that in fact is run by a con artist who will steal passwords, user names, and more when people log in.

Go to a known phishing site, and Internet Explorer blocks you from visiting, issuing a warning that you've been steered away from a phishing site. If you visit a site that Internet Explorer believes is suspicious, it lets you visit the site, but pops up a prominent warning that this might be a phishing site.

In my decidedly unscientific sampling, the filter did a bang-up job. It blocked at least 80 percent of phishing sites I've visited -- better, in my experience, than the filter built into Firefox.

Better printing

Overlooked in all the hoopla around major new additions such as tabbed browsing, security, and RSS feeds is a humble little feature that in fact is one of the most useful changes in all of IE7 -- how it handles printing.