Microsoft officially released Internet Explorer 7 yesterday, which can be downloaded for free at microsoft.com/ie. The big catch is that it only runs on Windows XP SP2. In November it’ll start showing up in Windows Update, but there’s no reason not to upgrade now, except for the fact that there’s no reason you should be using IE at all as Firefox is still a better browser. C|Net’s review of IE7 is pretty good. IE7 plugs most of the security holes found in previous versions, has tabbed browsing, and does a better job of rendering webpages properly than it used to, but Firefox is still faster, more secure, and supports web standards more completely.
In Mozilla news, Firefox 2 will be out this month as well. It’s not a huge upgrade, but they’ve squashed a bunch of bugs and improved the app’s operation in a few areas.