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.

Improved security

Everyone's biggest complaint about IE has been security, and in the past there was good reason for that criticism. But no longer. The new version of IE has been locked down to a remarkable degree. The most obvious tool is the new anti-phishing filter, but there's a lot more security underneath the hood you don't see.