“What the heck is up with the latest version of IE. It seems to get sick after a while, slows down, crashes, locks up.”
IE has always been a piece of crap, from day one. Unpin it from your taskbar, get Opera and make it your main browser, with FF as a back-up. Opera is small, powerful and slick.
Have to be careful about those hidden switches otherwise you get crappy tool bars that are impossible to uninstall, etc.
IE has never been great, but the latest versions have been complete fail.