I'm getting rather bored of these browser bashing comparison charts, so what if browser X is 400 times faster than browser Y I'm not interested.
I'm happy with what I have, Firefox, and the useful plugins that allow me to control the way I want to see my pages rendered.
Richard S.
Here the main point is not real speed, but speed through graphics. IE9's hardware acceleration means it is much, much, much, much, much better at drawing things (SVG, Canvas, images, text, everything) than other browsers. If you try the Fish Tank demo in Firefox...well, it's really slow.