I might be one of those very few people who do not have an alternate browser installed on my machine. I use Internet Explorer exclusively and have been quite happy with its performance and stability especially in Windows Vista. However, ever since I switched over to Vista x64, I've been strange, intermittent problems with it. Sometimes the browser just freezes for a fairly long time wheile loading certain Web pages. Although it starts responding in a while, it does become irritating.

This is where my new alternate browser comes in. This is Internet Explorer 7.0 (64-bit). IE64 has been fantastically stable and super-duper fast in both loading and rendering pages. There are only two reasons why I've not switched to using IE64 exclusively:

1. Adobe doesn't have a Flash rendering for IE64 (or for that matter any other 64-bit browser). This is a real pain since a lot of sites do use flash. Unfortunately, nor does SilverLight - which is a pity considering Microsoft is pushing the 64-bit platform quite a bit.
2. Links clicked from programs such as Outlook or Windows Mail always open in IE32. I haven't found a way to change this to default to IE64. The "Default Programs" section in Control Panel only lists "Internet Explorer" as a choice for the browser and doesn't allow me to select the 64-bit version of this.

I really wish I could change to running fully 64-bit programs since the benefits seem to be great.