If you're going to skip something, make it Internet Explorer 7.

Okay, that requires some explanation. As you know, some businesses are electing to skip Vista, to cling to Windows XP (or even 2000) and wait for Windows 7. In the past months we've offered countless reasons why that's a bad move. Still, that "skip" mentality lingers on, and although we don't agree with it, we can understand it.

Where browsers are concerned, however, skipping is not just a bad idea--it's a dangerous one. Internet Explorer 6 is the poster child for security breaches, arguably the main reason Windows XP earned its reputation as an unsafe-for-business OS.

Yet it's still in use in countless organizations. We're mystified as to why (if you have a good explanation, by all means post it in the comment section below), especially given that Internet Explorer 7 is free, easy to deploy, and significantly more secure.

Well, guess what? Microsoft just rolled out Internet Explorer 8, so the IE7 ship is about to sail. If you never got on it, no worries: Just skip ahead to IE8. It's free, easy to deploy, and even more secure than its predecessor.

Indeed, on the security front, IE now offers built-in protections against malware and phishing. Perhaps the best of these protections is Data Execution Detection, which "prevents certain types of code from writing to executable memory space." (Note: While IE8 is compatible with Windows XP, the DED feature requires Vista and SP1.)

One last note: 4sysops has an interesting piece on the deployment and management aspects of IE8 versus Firefox 3. The hands-down winner? Internet Explorer 8.