I don't think this is the right attitude to have. You should judge IE9 by its own merit, not by past misgivings. You can't (and shouldn't) be compelled to try IE9, but the reason you aren't using it should be that another browser works just fine for you, not because you wholeheartedly reject Microsoft for past suffering.

Also, it's my belief that the suffering we faced with IE is less an issue with the browsers themselves, and more of an issue with the update schedule. IE6 was very good at the time of it's release; it's a shame that it took so long for IE7 and IE8. But now, with Chrome (and now Firefox) releasing several major versions a year, we should see more and better developments in the browser space.

That sucks, I'm sorry to hear. I wasn't there back in the "good 'ol days", so I can't comment on the past. What I can tell you is that the team we have working on IE8 and IE9 is really serious about shipping the best product out there, and we're really serious about standards-compliance. We truly are making an effort to capture feedback too ... I see it walking down the hallways, the efforts each guy is making to ship the best thing out there ... sure, we're not perfect, but we're trying really damn hard, believe me. Unfortunately, try as I might, there really isn't much for me to do to help if your argument for why IE9 sucks is that the previous IEs sucked :(

I really actually am actively rooting for them to fail because of this ... does it make me a bad person?