I would have to agree with the threadstarter. Until a few years ago, I didn't pay much attention to other browsers with the exception of Netscape Navigator because most machines have IE pre-installed. Now, I use Firefox and Netscape primarily over IE. What browser is best depends on an individual's preferences.

After seeing a quick update in a computer magazine, it seems that only HP (Hewlett Packard I think) will be selling PCs with Linux pre-installed after Dell chickened out, and HP will only be doing so on a small scale anyway. I think Dell's decision was sucky from a personal point of view, but obviously a good one from a business point of view. I mean, who's going to buy in to an Operating System they don't know about? Most people I know don't know that there's an alternative to Windows that isn't Mac.

If you support Linux being pre-installed on PCs, it seems that the only thing you can do is go out there and inform people of Linux's existentce and how good it really is. Telling them you can boot from a live CD without getting rid of or damaging Windows would be a very good thing if you explain it well or show them yourself, because that kind of task can seem quite daunting to a computer newbie.

i think its becouse its made by microsoft and comes with the computer

I think all of you n00bs which still continue to use IE should learn a bit about standards and coding with standards on your mind and how IE breaks them with its rendering which is full of flaws and because of which lots of people must make separate CSS stylesheets for IE6 and IE7 just because they don;t follow the standards whch are set by W3. I mean, yeah, people don't know of nothing when they buy a PC, but continuing to use IE even if you know it's worse than other browser, but continue to use it only because you are used to it is very stupid.
You should definitively switch and make MS think of how many people stopped using it's stupid crappy old browser which CSS rendering (of the 7th ver) can be compared with Opera 6 which's first beta came out 5 years ago!
Stop using the poorly coded browser. Just STOP!

Well sad to say though that Internet Explorer 8 is here to fix all those problems with standards, however, with XHTML 2 and HTML 5 on the horizon it won't matter much as all major browsers will have to go through a update to get those two standards to work. Of course, Opera and Firefox have begin to implement some XHTML 2 and HTML 5, not all but some, in order for programmers and designers to get an idea how it will work and see what changes need to be made.

anyone knows any good sites for learning these new standards?
I want to learn, to keep up with current latest and best technology... zzz...

Internet Exploder 8 won't fix anything, it's still the same old crappy browser with less CSS support than Opera 8 and no SVG support. The lame guys at Microsoft are too lazy to do anything about it.

internet explorer is popular because its easy. its already installed and you just go straight to browsing. most people won't be screwed to actually go and download some browser which does the exact same job and is no different except in the styling. no one cares about the browser. as long as it works and you can go straight to your favorite sites then everyone is happy.