REDOMOND, WASHINGTON- Amid much fanfare and pomp, Microsoft released the long-awaited update to its Internet Explorer web browser on Tuesday, ushering in an exciting new era for Internet users who hadn't yet heard of Firefox or Opera.

"And now something brand new, something customers the world over have never seen before," said Ballmer, sweat dripping from every pore on his husky frame. "Are you ready? Here it is: tabbed browsing. That's right. Customers have never seen that before- on a Microsoft browser, anyway. It's all very exciting. I think I just soiled myself. Wait, yes I did."

This was no vaporware demo, either. Ballmer and an assistant successfully demonstrated this amazing new interface for the assemblage of reporters and Windows enthusiasts. The crowd issued audible gasps when Ballmer and company opened a link on MSN.com in a new tab without cluttering up the taskbar with countless icons.

Immediately skeptical journalists rushed behind the stage to see if the presentation monitor was showing some sort of pre-rendered animation or other such trickery. Amazingly, the browser had done it all by itself.

One observer later reported that he noticed the words "about Firefox" under the Help menu, but that doesn't seem likely since the Internet Explorer theme for the popular Mozilla browser isn't stable on Windows. Sooner or later, the Linux-using malcontents in the press are going to have to give credit where credit is due. After nearly five years of development, Microsoft has achieved tabs.

Of course, the truly radical aspects of IE7 have nothing at all to do with tabs. The project itself is a watershed of sorts for the company, a chance to eschew the old thinking of years passed and embrace ideas once thought to be antithetical to Microsoft's business plan.

"People like openness," said Ballmer. "So, we designed IE7 to be wide open, even more open than its predecessor. Not so much in terms of source code, you understand, but in security. IE7 comes jam-packed with firewall defeating, password broadcasting, ssh-cracking technologies our customers want and need."

"Internet Explorer Version 7," reads the marketing banner in the company's main lobby, "come for the tabs, stay for the crippling malware."

Still, with all the company's successes with IE7, there will certainly be some in the industry ready to criticize. For example, many people have taken issue with the delay in getting the browser to market, noting that, even after all this time, the product is still in beta.

"Why has it taken them so long to come out with a successor to IE6?" asked 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller. "If you ask me, that's a really crappy development cycle. There's definitely something wrong with a company so incapable of delivering software on time."

The main reason behind the lag, according to Ballmer, has to do with the large number of features packed into the current release.

"A lot has changed since we ceased browser development in the late 1990's. After clawing our way to web dominance, there really wasn't much point in pooping out more software people weren't going to pay for. Anyway, did I mention this thing has tabs? Tabs! It supports JPG files, too. I'm not sure if the last version could do that. I'll check."

IE7 also includes something called "bookmarking," a handy feature that saves the user from having to type long URLs over and over again, as well as support for a brand new scripting language called HTML. In fact, the powerhouse browser includes so many new and innovative ideas that some users might have a hard time getting adjusted. In focus group testing, IE7 has caused some users to curl up in a ball and weep for hours at a time though researchers admit that in at least once case the subject was actually in the control group using IE6.

In spite of this, Ballmer says that he and his company remain unafraid of riding on technology's bleeding edge.

"Our new Internet Explorer is ready to take the web to the next level," said the CEO, mopping his forehead with a roll of paper towels. "Sure, that kind of can be scary at first, but we're confident that with proper training and medication users will eventually warm up to it. IE7 is like stepping through a door into the future- or the recent past. I guess it depends on how much you use the Internet."