First of all, I am not making an arguments. Secondly, I was just trying to give a simple answer that I think is understandable for someone who never used FF before . Yes, IE8 "beta" has some new optimizations, but remember FF3 RC is still under development. As for IE7 having protected mode on Vista and FF doesn't, while this statement might be true for some that running Windows Vista, but not for those running Windows XP.