Firefox
Microsoft got busted for bundling the OS install with too much of their own crap software. So their had to remove their Java version and of course they did not want to distribute it with the SUN version.
Java is really safe nowadays. It is much much safer than the ActiveX/Flash you probably use daily in IE anyway. And finally I have to add that you should also use Firefox instead of IE.
Zoozie
I have installed Firefox (it's free), and the only problem is with sites that require ActiveX, as Firefox does not come with ActiveX support as standard. I have tried IE 7 on my other XP machine, and it looks like Firefox did last year with tabbed browsing.
Microgaming casinos seem unable to recognise Firefox, and still use IE to display it's lobby webpages. There is now a third party ActiveX plug in for Firefox, so this issue can be overcome. I have looked at the consequences of removing IE entirely, but in Windows 98 it seems so much a part of the OS that I expect nothing will work afterwards. An EU ruling seeks to prevent Microsoft from programming this kind of interdependency in future, and say that MS must offer a Windows OS variant that can work without any of the "extras" needing to be installed (Media Player, IE, Outlook Express etc).
In the end, I decided not to be mean when ordering my new PC, I went pretty much to the top of the range for a general purpose home entertainment PC. I did not go for the next level though, the extreme gaming machines with dual graphics cards, crossfire, and quad core processors. I DID, however, consider the future of Microgaming casinos, opting for dual 320Gig hard drives
(I have the vain hope that MGS will leave me room for my photos, music, and videos, currently forced offline on to CDs).