Firefox, IE7 and Opera - I use 2 of 3, here's why and what is your preference?

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I have for a long time used both IE and Firefox. I liked Firefox because of the tabbed browsing, and now MS has introduced IE7 which also supports tabbed browsing, and Opera 10 likewise supports tabbed browsing. MS has joined this group assumedly because of competition, people have learned that a row of readable or quickly referenced tabs is a lot easier than a host of open windows that ends up in a stack under one label at the bottom of your screen. I still use both, but for specific reasons.. I have a website that often contains 1000 items or more, and I need to check it ever day to insure that products I am promoting are in stock, (it is an affiliate website). The set up for both browsers is the same, I use my laptop and set the touchpad zones to include a simulated center click on the top left corner. In both IE and FF this opens a click in a new tab, but I have reasons for the use of each browser.... Firefox... When I go to do my daily check of products, I first clear the history so the link colors will give me an indication of which links I have already visited. I go to each page of my website one at a time in the main tab, then I center click, (top left corner of touch pad) each item one after another. This saves me the time of waiting for each item to show up, then back paging. It takes me about 30-40 minutes to check all the products on my website. In IE, I can see a tab opening, but once the tab bar is full the only indication I get of a new link click being registered and a new tab being opened is a little square at the end of the tab bar will flash once in an orangish color. FF on the other hand draws a dotted lined box around the image, and the text link changes color immediately to the color of a visited link, and it does this on the fly without refreshing the page. This makes checking lots of links quick and easy and I have a reference point along the way. Not so with IE. When I do standard surfing or checking my daily advertising and commissions I use IE. It pops up faster for sure, but it just seems as though my surfing is a little more user friendly. I have not used Opera since several versions ago, probably 3 years back, but I've heard others say that Opera is THE fastest browser out there. Have you used Opera, and does it seem to be the fastest to you? If you don't mind telling us, what reasons other than preference do you have for using one or the other, or even multiple browsers for different types of surfing?