ie7_dayzero.jpgIE7 finally ships in its finished form today, and the guys at Laptop Magazine say that it improves on Firefox in some key areas. Among its new features are tabbed browsing just like Firefox, an integrated RSS reader and plug-in support. Sound familiar?

Overall, the interface is far leaner and more polished than IE6 and even more convenient than the beloved Firefox 1.X releases... In the grand battle between Firefox and IE, we think that IE has a bit of an edge in this release, although the Firefox 2 betas we have seen will catch it up a bit. Many of the things we like about Firefox have been implemented in IE7 and have been polished to be more streamlined and useful.
Microsoft says IE 7 is a lot more secure than its predecessor, so that might improve one of the most glaring problems with Internet Explorer 6. But better than Firefox? We're going to have to try this for ourselves. Either grab it for yourself when it's offered up for download soon, or it will be pushed upon you via Windows Update sometime in early November if you have Service Pack 2 installed. – Charlie White

Product Page [Microsoft, via Laptop Magazine]