I dont know if the google reader guys read your blog and fixed the bugs, but reader seems to work well on IE for me. There are some alignment issues but they aren’t really disturbing.

Also the OPML import from thunderbird worked like a breeze for me and the speed(reading a feed) wasn’t bad either.

I do agree with you on the search and the integration with Gmail part, but like you said lets give them a chance they are still in Beta.

I also agree with you on one more thing , the answer to the question “Will I use Google Reader?”.

To me Thunderbird still seems to be lot cooler than Google Reader.