I think some of the features you talk about are worth missing out on most of the time. It's a small price to pay for a browser that is a lot faster and much more secure than IE.
The fact IE is installed on every Windows installation also makes it more vulnerable to attack, security holes or not. If you wanted to cause maximum damage to a computer in terms of adware or spyware, you'd target IE, not just because it's the easiest but because almost everyone has it. I've yet to come accross software that hijacks Opera or FireFox.
To be quite honest, if they know who the phishing, spamming and hijacking sites are then why the f*ck are they still on the web? Take MySearchNow, I've been hijacked by this 3 times now and my GF had to reinstall Windows after it took over her computer. Why has nothing been done about the company that's behind all this because these aren't isolated incidents. I'm sure some of you have been, or know someone that has been, hijacked by the same group.
Maybe it's time people on the net stood up for themselves and did something about the Spyware and Adware creating sites and get rid of them once and for all. We shouldn't have to protect ourselves from these people, we should eliminate these threats from the source.