Now I've been running the super, scary, do not use, seriously, not even if your life depends on it, IE7 Beta 2 Previews as my main browser pretty much since they day they first launched. Not a problem. Aside from one niggle with the phishing filter I've reported (it seems to have a slight problem with my tab options) the previews worked wonderfully. I can honestly say it's one of the few browsers I actually like rather than tolerate.

Today I updated to the official IE7 Beta (no really we've dropped the preview tag). Of course the phishing filter niggle is still there, some of the minor issues I've wished for have arrived and they've tweaked some aspects of the UI - and I'm still perfectly happy, except for one small change. The browser keeps vanishing. As you might expect, it's a little annoying. No warning, no crash report, no evidence of the browser ever having existed, it just vanishes.

Now I appreciate I'm still using beta software, but the Beta Previews didn't have this problem so I feel it's fair game for a whine. It's just another, depressingly typical, piece of software which works fine for me during the period when it's supposed to be useless and then it starts to go wrong when it's supposed to be fixed and more stable. I have no idea why software deteriorates as it gets more stable but this seems a fairly common problem to me. I want the early versions I'm not supposed to use! (Thankfully, I still have the installers so if this is still happening tomorrow I may move back a version.)