Browser & Email Issues

I've been having issues using Internet explorer. When I would try to visit certain pages, they wouldn't completely load because of the images or something. It was getting very frustrating trying to read some of my favorite blogs and visiting websites. The only thing that would seem to fix the problem is rebooting the computer altogether.
I had heard about the new browser called firefox, but never downloaded it because everything on my browser (at the time) was working. But since downloading it today, it seems to have fixed all the problems I had with the other pages and they seem to load a lot faster.
I also noticed that using outlook express was taking a lot of time to load as well. So I downloaded the mozilla email program called Thunderbird and it seems to work well. Both programs imported all my bookmarks and emails. The Thunderbird program also has a built-in junk mail feature which I like. On outlook, to specify something as junk mail you had to block the sender from you list which meant going through a few windows. On Thunderbird, you can do it with a click of a button.
I don't know much more about the bells and whistles with these two programs, but so far I think they're great.