The final version of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, XP x64, and Windows Server 2003 is now available. Find out why you want to download it now in my exhaustive review! Even when IE 6 first showed up in Windows XP, I was disappointed that it adopted the XP look and feel but failed to offer any major functional improvements over the IE 5.x products. This disappointment continued over the years as IE languished in Microsoft's version of the Island of Lost Toys. But a surprisingly popular open source browser solution, Mozilla Firefox, caused Microsoft to wake up and start work on a new IE version. Not surprisingly, some of the best new IE 7 features seem to be directly inspired by similar Firefox features. That's not a bad thing, and it's no accident: Many people would like to stick with IE, but want some of the cool features offered by Firefox.

Paul Thurrott Windows SuperSite