The latest version of IE is 6, and it has certainly accumulated an impressive record of holes: 153 since 18 April 2001, according to the SecurityFocus Vulnerabilities Archive.
So, when was the last time that you upgraded IE to get new functionality instead of fixing the latest security hole?
Please do the Internet community a whole good, take 10 minutes and read this article at Securityfocus.com and then decide if it would be such a bad thing to go away from IE.
I'm using Opera myself but the author recommended Firefox. Both of these are excellent browsers that continually get improved.