IE7 is pretty good. It definitely has bugs, but have a very good implementation of the tabbed browser i am so used to in FireFox (my only reaon to still continue with FireFox). I also found it to be faster, but your mileage may vary.
Vista beta was available for download (not anymore) for a limited period of time. Anyway, you need patience to get it working at the Beta level due to driver issues and such.
Microsoft has provided an upgrade advisor for beta, u can see this here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...r/default.mspx
I found the GUI to be very slick and fantastic, definitely a step up from the present XP. You may need a good graphics card to get the best out of it, though.
A sneak preview of the UI is available here:
http://www.activewin.com/articles/2005/betavis.shtml
A virtual pressroom with tons of Info here (including soem tools for compatibility):
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...a/default.mspx
There are a lot of sites with Vista info, just google.