Most of the commentary I've seen on IE7's support for RSS has been based on camparisons with news aggregators like RSS Bandit and Bloglines. I don't think this is fair or useful.

I haven't installed IE7, but from what I've read, I'll agree with the naysayers that it doesn't come close to displacing these tools for me or a host of other people. The functionality is far too rudimentary.

But what if we compare it to Firefox? Firefox's support for RSS is even less useful, if that is possible. At least IE (a) tells me that the feed as new items and (b) has a view that allows me to format the RSS feed and view it in my browser. In Firefox, feed items show up as bookmarks, and I'll be damned if I can remember if I've read the items before.

(The only use I've ever had for Firefox's RSS features is to use it to view bookmarks I've added to delicious, which publishes there as RSS feeds.)

Besides, if IE 7 did include a full blown useful news reader, I'm sure people would be jumping up and down, screaming that they were wiping out the market space. Google or Apple could get away with it, mind you, since people are so infatuated with them that they can get away with murder.