  As of this writing, I've had my own connection to the internet for around a year and a half. One change I made to my internet browsing is when I finally dumped Internet Explorer and moved to Mozilla Firefox. Now, even though IE is up to v6 and the latest version of Firefox is v0.9.1 , I must agree that, even though Firefox is still in beta, its a far better browser in my opinion. I've used it since v0.8 and I think it's an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer. A few reasons being?
Well, for one, I find it to be a lot more secure that IE will ever be, especially when paired with a decent firewall. One thing that Firefox does not include that IE does is a little thing called ActiveX. What it basically is is something that can add/change stuff on your computer with or without your consent. Since this can be and has been proven to be a security hole, Firefox does not include it. Secondly, you can add extentions. Basically, you can make it the way you want it. You don't need to download a bunch of unneeded features.
If you need them, all you need to do is find the appropriate extention. If there isn't the extention you need, you can go to the urlLink MozillaZine Forum (Sometimes down due to overload) and make a request and, if the request is reasonable, a extention might be made or it might end up just being integrated into the browser. It can also be themed. There are plenty of themes for Firefox and some are pretty visually pleasing. They can also be configured so you can have what buttons you want up the main taskbar instead of like in IE where the buttons are pratically stuck in place and can't be rearranged or switched around. Also, Firefox has a thing called Tabbed Browsing. What tabbed browsing is basically, you can have tabs in the browser and you can click them to go to the pages you have open. But the magic of it is that Firefox normally has only have one button on the taskbar taking up space but you can have mulitiple tabs open in the browser at once.
Great, eh? Firefox also has a built-in pop-up blocker that works pretty well and the nice thing is is that it doesn't take a external toolbar to work, like the Google Toolbar in IE. The pop-up blocker is built in. Firefox also supports newer standards than IE, namely, ones laid out by the urlLink W3C . It supports standards that M$ apparenly doesn't care to add support for in IE. Sometimes you may come across a page that says they only support IE but the problem is not with Firefox, usually, but with the fact that the webmaster has made it so it only works right in IE. Sometimes menus don't work or other things. But really, its the webmasters fault for not making his sites code work in other browsers besides IE, like it should. When you run across a problem like this, you can download an extention called IE View and what that does is add a option on right click to view the page in IE if you ever have to. Basically, the problem with IE is that it has security holes up the ass, does not support all web standards, its too easily exploited, its so far integrated into the OS that M$ says, if you remove it, its gonna pratically ruin your OS and so on.
Firefox does support more webstandards, it is not as easily exploited, it is not integrated into the OS like IE, and it can be themed and extended. Also, Firefox is open source which means, like if a bug is found, you can report it and they will get around to fixing it and actually release a newer version within a couple of months with most of the bugs that were reported fixed.
Does M$ do that with IE, at least withing a decent timeframe? Not from what I've seen. Sadly, some things just require IE still like Windows Update. That is one of the few times I actually have to use IE but most of the time I can just use Firefox. Have I not convinced you? urlLink Give this article a read then. If you feel convinced, urlLink give Firefox a shot . For some, Firefox v0.9 hasn't been the best fit. In that case, urlLink the slightly older v0.8 seems to work better for some. I hope you are convinced like I am. Overall, I feel Firefox is a superior browser to IE by far. 
