Uhh, you can change the degree to which ClearType smooths the fonts. Also, I've run Firefox 2rc3, IE7, Opera, Deepnet, and SeaMonkey interchangeably for a long time now...and I use at least 2 out of those 5 daily, depending on what I'm doing. Each have their settings tweaked to my liking, each is updated as much as possible. I've had issues with all of them crashing on me, but I get them fixed as soon as possible. IE7 has, by far, the fastest startup time. FF is my most customized one, and Opera is just the most usable one out of all of them.
arnge, if you have weak eyes, IE7 is the only one that supports full page zooms, meaning everything (including jpgs/flash/text/banners) get scaled, unlike the others which just scale the size of the text. It's not perfect, but I've heard a lot of positive feedback about that feature from people who need accessibility options due to their vision.
And please, don't just say "it's crap, don't install."
Most of the points you bring up are simple tweaks, that any user should be able to fix to their liking.
"icons misplaced" -- They've adjusted it to make more room for the websites you visit, instead of the menus on your browser taking up that space. Of course you can turn them back on if that's your thing.
"links not working, blocks everything" -- Hold ctrl while clicking on a
known link. You can also go into pop-up blocker options and disable it if you don't need the security aspect of the browser.
"needs a lot of memory" -- On average it uses less than IE6, while being faster. If you want the least memory usage, of the big 3 browsers, Opera is usually the best in terms of using less memory. Of course there are much smaller, much lighter browsers out there, but they also come with less features.
"fonts are blurred" --
ClearType PowerToy so you can tweak it as much as you like, or completely turn it off. I prefer the look of ClearType on LCD to that of just regular fonts. On CRT's it does not make that large of a difference. You are not forced to use it in either case.
Bottom line, tweak a browser to your liking, and THEN complain. There are things I wish I could do in IE, but can't, so I open up one of the other 4 browsers I use regularly, and vice versa.
I just fucking hate the one-dominant-browser argument tech-forums have had since the announcement of FF2.0 and IE7. I've happily used more than one for years now. Just don't be a retard, and any browser can be good to you.