The homepage hijack is the result of a few reg keys left behind that take over your default homepage everytime you change the settings. It is not IE'* fault, but the result of what your now gone spyware planted in your computer somewhere.

I have some very dangerous ideas to fix it ... but as I said they are dangerous. If you want, catch me on AIM sometime and I'll help ya out.

Firefox is pretty slick...
I'm using it right now
It'* still in the pre 1.0 stages but the tabbed browsing and no popups make it pretty slick.
Version 0.9 was released just a week or two ago, I think...

The only down side that I've run into is having to install plugins, which isn't a big deal, but may be a bit intimidating for people who aren't tech savy.

I still keep IE on my machine, and regret to say that I use it from time to time, IE has been around for years and years where Firefox is pretty much brand new, so there are certian features that aren't there yet... (but I'll be they'll be there in 1.0)
Anyway, check it out if you haven't already.
http://mozilla.org/products/firefox/

no offense to anyone but if you get rid of IE have fun with microsoft updates without it, as far as I know they wont let you use any other browser for that, might as well keep IE around you'll always fall back on it at some point, theres always some use for multiple browsers at once

that is a very good point... perhaps another anti-trust suit is going to come up...