Which one of these three browsers -- and the fourth in our roundup, Apple's Safari -- is fastest? I would submit to you that it just doesn't matter. They all perform in the same range, which is to say they're all pretty fast. There's no test that would be truly meaningful, because each loads different Web sites at different rates, depending on the coding used.

Security? IE sure needs it

What about security? IE7's will interrupt you frequently with yellow bars and other prompts to deliver the same security that Firefox offers out of the box. If you want to feel like you're browsing from jail, be my guest. I prefer the feeling of freedom Firefox engenders.

Firefox, Opera and Safari won't run ActiveX applets, and that's a big part of why they are innately more secure than IE. It's true that ActiveX is comparatively easy for developers to code, but it lacks the security features of Java. We are paying for a mistake Microsoft made in the early 1990s. Instead of building ActiveX the way it should have been built, Microsoft is throttling the client software -- which is the security measure of last resort. The future is open-standard Java and JavaScript.

Whose anti-phishing is better? Let's be serious. Internet Explorer is currently the only browser that absolutely requires this technology. It's also the only one that needs protected-mode browsing (only in Vista) or any of the other "locked down" stuff that Microsoft is touting. IE is literally unsafe on the Internet without anti-malware and anti-phishing protection. That's just not the case with other browsers.