Microsoft made it easy to customize IE for specialized uses and added all sorts of extra features. None that would benefit users, like privacy protections, meaningful security, resume downloads, and cookie management, however. Nonetheless, IE 5.5 is stable and fast. Noticeably faster than Netscape on most sites. Options At Last Internet Explorer is no longer the only game in town, for either Windows or Linux.
Opera is great, and getting better all the time.
Pages render very fast. The leanest version is 2.08 megabytes, without Java. With Java it runs around 9 megabytes, which is still less than half the size of Netscape or Internet Explorer. Increase font size to huge, set the colors to whatever you see best, and sound prompts. You don't need to use the mouse.