Frist off uninstall and tool bars you have, with IE7 you have a great pop up blocker and only really good design website's popup's come through. It also has a search feature that you can set up to use your favorite search engines. Currently mine is set up for google, wiki and demonoid that would be 3 tool bars in one. now you might not be able to veiw secure websites (your bank/credit card) which was common i'm not sure if it still is or not, I've never had that issues it's an easy fix. Click tools>Internet options> advanced (tab) >scroll down and turn on TLS 1.0 and TSS 2.0 &3.0 by putting a check mark in the box next to it.
The reason Bill Gate (Microsoft) seems to want to control everything is because he is trying to elmiinate spyware and virus, and you wouldn't beleive how many people call in with issues of both and it's 10,000% their fault and they don't understand why.
As for using firefox, i didn't like it before i went to work with microsoft, now i've learned that it's not all the secure, and I always had issues with it. ...
