Microsoft believes that it is The standard, and everybody should pay them to be compatible. I've hated everything MS, since DOS was replaced. Put off using Windows, until I could get DOS versions of the software I wanted to use. IE has always been a bad thing, seemed to need a lot of security updates, which really slows down a dial-up connection. Pretty sure it's the reason for a lot of malicious crap getting onto my computer. Anybody ever successfully removed IE from their Windows computer? I've tried so many time on my XP, and it would still pop up occasionally. Haven't tried on the Vista, but kind need it, since the Merrill Lynch website (401k retirement fund), only seems let me in with IE. Yeah, a year later, I'm still more than $3k short of where I was before the big crash last summer...