Well, it is listed as beta software, and it is free, and it does have a little bug in the upper right hand corner that you click on to report bugs to Apple, so it seems to me that most of us using Safari know that there will be some issues.
Safari is my main browser now, and it crashes a lot less than IE did on either platform. Netscape is, I think, out of the game. For OSX, the new Mozilla Navigator specifically designed for OSX seems to work well. Each of these programs has a popup blocker.
Generally, I think you're better off to use your system resources for attaching to the internet, as opposed to anything like MSN8, AOL, etc.