Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 better than Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7

Here's something that I didn't expect to be saying in 2007 - Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 better than Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.

I've been running Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 on several system since it was released and I have to say that I'm majorly impressed.  Sure, I know there's a known issues list that's quite long, and I know that extension compatibility isn't great, but that doesn't stop me liking it.  In the two areas that counts - performance and reliability - Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 beats both Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.  Even though I'm handling a beta, I'm getting such good reliability that I sometimes wonder whether I've reverted back to 2.0 ... but then again, I never found that all that reliable.

Extension compatibility when 3.0 is finally released could be an issue for many and cause them to hold back from upgrading (at least until their favorite extensions are updated) but for me this is an upside because a lot of Firefox related issues come down to extensions (either a dodgy one or having too many installed).  I got too enthusiastic with extensions back with Firefox 1.5 and I'm not making that mistake again.  There's a lot of cool extensions out there but they're not conducive to reliability and performance.

The way that things are going, I can see myself making a total shift to Firefox 3.0 in 2008, which would be cool because I could have a unified browsing platform across all operating systems.

Thoughts?

[UPDATE: Oh, and while we're talking about browsers, Netscape is dead.  I can't really say that I'm surprised or shocked (or that bothered for that matter) since Netscape has been irrelevant since the last millenium.]