In case you're looking for a new web browser, if only in an attempt to get away from the God-awful Microsoft Internet Explorer, give Mozilla's new Firebird browser a go.

It's only in beta release (or "technology preview" as they insist on calling it), but the interface is a little cleaner than the old Mozilla browser. It's fully compatible with the older Mozilla "signature", such that you can still do your online banking and other secure web stuff.

Better Than IE
Because it has tabbed browsing. When are Microsoft going to wake up to themselves and make IE tabbable? No-one needs 25 seperate processes, clogging up system resources, when they could have one.

Because it's skinnable. Give me a browser skin that produces a minimalist, out-of-the-way interface any day.

Better Than Safari
It breaks my heart to be down on an Apple product, but as fast as it is, as clean and uncluttered as the user-interface is, producing a browser that has Alzheimer's is just useless. Despite Apple's claims, Safari loses its cookies at the drop of a hat. It remembers where you've been on the internet, but it doesn't seem to recollect your cookie information such as your name, or login details.

Of course, that's on the 50% of websites on which Safari actually works. The rest are either badly rendered, or you just can't display the content. God help you if you want to do Internet banking using Safari. Apple's insistance on having a totally indepedent (of Microsoft and Mozilla) browser is all very admirable, but when none of the banks will let you log on via Safari, what's the point in using it?

Firebird is available for all the usual operating systems.