What really sets IE7 apart from competing browsers is its impressive RSS support. In fact, IE7 may well bring RSS to the masses. Its built-in RSS reader is simple enough to use so that those who have never heard of RSS can easily use it, yet sophisticated enough that it may make you throw away your dedicated RSS reader.

Subscribing to a feed is as simple as it gets. When you visit a Web site with an RSS feed, the small RSS button on the toolbar lights up orange. Click it and select a feed to read it, and if you want to subscribe, click "Subscribe to this feed." As with Favorites, you can save feeds to folders.

The RSS reader integrates into the new IE Favorites Center. In the Favorites Center, click Feeds, and you'll see a list of feeds and feeds folders. Click a feed to read it; click a folder to see a list of feeds in it. IE7 automatically updates your feeds -- no need to tell it to get to work.

You read a feed in a single, long page, for easy browsing. You can also search through the entire feed; sort by date, title, and author; or filter by any categories the feed has created. So if you're reading an RSS feed of a blog about Microsoft, for example, you can filter to see only entries about Vista, Internet Explorer, and so on.

In Windows Vista, IE's RSS support is even better than in XP. RSS feeds can be displayed live, as they come in, inside a nifty RSS gadget on your desktop. That way, you don't even need to take an action to read feeds; they're right there on your desktop.