Seconded Firefox is cooool Nearly does everything, is so much easier to use too. Hint: Keep IE as your default browser, make Firefox easy to open tho. Use firefox for everything except those that just dont work properly. Best all round life :)

LOL, so.. leave IE set to default.. so that infected links can still be launched and... infect you?:) make mozilla/firefox your default, use either Agent or Thunderbird for email.. both can be set to default mail programs in XP/2k... though, dont know how well Agent would integrate (showing unread emails on login etc..) as i've never tried it as default hehe.