I've been using the open source web browser, Firefox, from Mozilla for the past week or so, and I must say that I've been pleasantly impressed with it so far.
Firefox was quick to download (couple minutes). Things I like so far are include: the tabbed browsing, the improved bookmarking system (its easier to file your bookmarks), its got more keyboard shortcuts than IE, and it seems to have a pretty good pop-up blocker system. Search support is much better in firefox too. I'm a big fan of the Google Toolbar under IE, but now its integrated with Firefox, and you can also link to other search engines. And for some reason, I really like the ability to pick multiple "home pages" so that when you start your browser it will automatically load more than one web site (for example, your favorite news sites, and blogs).
I also like the extensions, which allows you too add/remove new features or functionality. One extension called EditCSS actually lets you edit the CSS of a webpage and see the changes live (local of course). This is handy for experimenting with CSS blog templates. I really am a big fan of these modular "upgrades" to software apps. This way, you can choose what you want and what you don't need rather than being forced to do a wholesale upgrade -- which is common with Microsoft products.
In terms of overall performance Firefox seems to take a little bit longer to load up (i wish you could keep in pre-loaded in the system tray), but it seems to render pages as fast, if not faster as Internet Explorer. And my home PC is already slow as is (Celeron 466), so the speed improvement is more noticeable. The UI is pretty clean and quite simple (doesn't clutter up your screen), plus apparently you can download free "skins" or themes for it.
And of course, as with all open source, its absolutely free.
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