Nalgenie,

Mozilla's Firefox is a quarter the size of IE, has none of the bugs, and is what inspired 90% of the "new" features that are in IE 7 & 8. Add to that that it is unaffected by 80% of all the viruses, spyware and malware that is designed to specifically target IE and you can see why I use it.

Face it, chasing chips has you running down some pretty unsavory internet alleys. Spyware, keyloggers, spam Phishers, and out and out Idententity thieves abound.
Anything that gives you an edge is useful.

That said, I still have IE installed on my comp, but it is solely for Explorer updates and occasionally needed to access some of the poorer sites that do not recognize anything else. The best part is it is free...

Do the download and give it a shot.

See if those "problems" you can "live' with don't disappear. Just the fact that you are used to Living with the problems means you have been well trained by Microsoft to accept second class performance and service.