I switched some time back to Firefox from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 from frustration of lockups with some web pages and slow rendering of other pages and was impressed by how FF seemed to muddle through; however ‘usability’ is the bottom line and I kept finding myself clicking back to IE for certain thing or wishing that I had IE up instead. So I’ve decided to give in and had back to IE 8 as my default browser and live with the occasional weirdness/lockups I’ve experienced with IE. Here’s why:

• · I use multiple computers around the house with roaming profile. With IE’s default setup I can simply set my profiles Favorites and Links to the network profile folder and see all my links on any machine. This is probably easily done knowing how to in Firefox; but it’s not apparent.
• · I like the way add-ons work in IE better as far as left click and search with the color tabs; again I’m sure there are some spiffy add-ons to FF that will make it work just like IE, but IE works just like IE.
• · Biggest annoyance is; IE uses the Windows default file requester for location selection during downloads. FF seems to only download to the users download folder. Again; there’s probably a check box someplace to fix this but point to non-RTFM for IE on this one too.
• · I have to give big points to FF for better partial and delayed rendering of pages as well as never seeming to hang like IE; which just should not happen in my book.

Overall though I think for normal knock-about web clicking IE is the more usable out of the box. The page lockups and IE crashes are a big deal but I’m hoping MS gets their shit together on this; controlling and governing add-ons and some analyses tools (wizards) for helping to discover problems, but I think side by side IE is a better product from a user’s perspective for everyday use.