OTOH, all the people up here that I've spoken with are taking it up for different reasons. It's not the tabs that is being stated as the reason.... nobody says "I installed firefox so I could get tabs"; it's all "I installed firefox so I could get rid of the bullshit."

The word is out there; people have come to associate IE with uncontrollable bullshit, while firefox lets you have the control. Among the folks up here (and believe me, they're not all cognoscenti; some are so far from cognoscenti that the light from cognoscenti will take a million years to reach them) IE is seen as a tool to allow the user to be marketed to, much like television, while firefox allows them to control what and how much gonzo marketing leaks in; they can control popups, whether they get them, who they get them from, etc, while IE seems to be oriented to making sure that you get the advert, whether you want it or not.