Ready For A New Beta? (IE7)
You have to imagine Bill Gates standing over you, a menacing gleam in his eye: "So tell me, punk" he says. "You feeling lucky? Well, do you?"
OK, that's a little silly, but using any beta--- by definition, unfinished software--- always carries some risks. Early betas can be extremely unstable and incomplete; although later betas should (that's the key word) be approaching the quality of the final release of the software.
Internet Explorer 7 is in beta 2, and is open to the public. It looks pretty good, and seems to be reasonably stable. It doesn't advance the state of the art in browsers much at all, but does bring IE up to current standards, incorporating some of the popular advances (such as tabbed browsing) introduced by Opera, Firefox, and the like.
Like IE6, the new IE7 also integrates well with the Windows OS; which is either a good thing (because it offers more seamless operation) or a hideous flaw (because it doesn't stand alone), depending on your viewpoint.
It has other benefits, too: It's much, much less resource-intensive than Firefox, for example. (Imagine: A Microsoft product more svelte and streamlined than a competitor's! <g>)
But it *is* a beta, so you really do need to approach it with caution. If you have good backups or another form of safety net for your PC, the IE7 beta2 is available for free download here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx
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