I am impressed at the speed of safari.
So far, I found only one site at which it did not work totally properly, and I miss an autologon feature and other abilities which may be available as plug-ins. This post was made using Safari.

http://www.apple.com/safari

I've been trying Safari out today, and the only positive I see is anti-aliased font rendering, which typically makes text look better but also can make it look fuzzy. The negatives: The lack of plugins and themes, the fact that you can only resize the browser window from the bottom right, the paltry tabs features, the fact that viewing the source of a web page is not accompanied with any syntax highlighting, and the fact that you can only scroll one line at a time (so it takes forever to scroll down a page using a scrollwheel), means that I will stay far away from this browser. Safari is comparable in speed to Firefox, and still noticeably slower than Opera. Also, Safari does not handle Flash and Java well at all. With Java, it simply freezes Safari, whereas with Flash, it screws up click-events. The behavior with Flash and Java is very odd, and I have only seen this sort of thing on Safari and on no other browsers. Maybe you could have guessed, but I subsequently uninstalled Safari and would not recommend anyone even waste their time with this browser until they make make major improvements in later releases.

Here's my overall ranking of the browsers for Windows:

Firefox >> Opera > K-meleon > Dr. Orca >> Internet Explorer 7, Safari

A well customized Firefox is leaps and bounds beyond any other browser out there (though I could get by with Opera or K-meleon if Firefox disappeared). IE7 and Safari are tied for last, and in my opinion, they are way behind other browsers. IE7 is all bloat and is slow, whereas Safari is just lame and lacks a lot of functionality.

Yeah, It's got many drawbacks, but I still find it to be the fastest browser I have tried, including all those you mention. It hasn't gone down well at many review sites, but I suspect there is some prejudice creeping in at some them!
Another significant point is memory hogging; typically 80 megs versus Opera at 30 megs. I haven't checked other browsers.
Opera suits me down to the ground with its built in mail and notes - without using any widgets. We all would benefit by trying many browsers to find what suits our individual requirements the best.

Bill, you want to think twice before using Safari being that it's the most insecure browser out there. For example, see this link:

Windows Safari bugs and exploits "popping up like hotcakes"

THe funny thing is that all of these exploits and vulnerabilities people are finding in Safari for Windows also exist in the Mac version, which means that Apple has possibly shot itself in the foot, in a very bad way, by porting Safari to Windows. Worst case scenario: Apple doesn't increase its meager reach in the browser market, and on top of that, makes its own Mac/Safari users much more exposed to exploits.

The link does have two responding posts:

1. PUBLIC BETA!

and

2. But does this really even matter to the "average" Windows user? If it did, why would they put up with IE for so long? At least you know Apple will update Safari if it is needed! Below is from Wikipedia:

Much criticism of Internet Explorer is related to concerns about security: Much of the spyware, adware, and computer viruses across the Internet are made possible by exploitable bugs and flaws in the security architecture of Internet Explorer, sometimes requiring nothing more than viewing of a malicious web page in order to install themselves. This is known as a "drive-by download": an attempt to trick the user into installing malicious software by misrepresenting the software's true purpose in the description section of an ActiveX security alert.

While Internet Explorer is not alone in having exploitable vulnerabilities, its ubiquity has resulted in many more affected computers when vulnerabilities are found. Microsoft has not responded as quickly as competitors in fixing security holes and making patches available.[14] Not only are there more security holes discovered in Internet Explorer, but these vulnerabilities tend to remain unpatched for a much longer time, in some cases giving malicious web site operators months to exploit them before Microsoft releases a patch.

The security website Secunia keeps an up-to-date list of known unpatched vulnerabilities. According to the Washington Post, Internet Explorer was known to have exploit code for unpatched critical flaws for 284 days of 2006 [1]. The article goes on to compare this with 9 days for Mozilla Firefox.

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It's hard accepting something different, isn't it? Think different!

Do you use iTunes, Lucid?

I have used iTunes but this is somewhat beside the point, as the question is not whether I'm open to or accepting of new things, which clearly I am since the issues I had with Safari would not be found by casual web users or a superficial test driving of the browser, and since any rational person (myself included) would not hesitate to be accepting of something if there was a rational basis to it, but the question in my opinion is whether Safari is even worth downloading and using. And in my opinion, it's not. It's not just the lack of dozens of features that are typically taken for granted in other browsers, like basic tab functionality, plugins, themes, proper memory management, and being able to render Flash and Java properly, but also the fact that it's the most insecure browser on the planet, IE notwithstanding. I would estimate that most users of IE are your typical PC (and hence Windows) users who don't know too much about computers and/or don't have the time to bother. But if you are even the least bit computer suave (meaning you're not afraid of installing programs and know how) and know even the least bit about web browsers, then it is very likely that you will not be using IE (and certainly not Safari), but rather Firefox (and less so Opera). I find the statistics of only 15% of web users using Firefox and 80% to be using IE to be unbelievable. If people were more knowledgeable, these percentages would be switched. My problem with Apple is that they released a crappy buggy insecure browser to the public, beta status notwithstanding, and that's just irresponsible and poor judgment. And on top of that, Apple is adding more mud to the web browsing arena which will likely obscure the few diamonds out there. People will think "oh Safari, must be like iTunes!", and it's not. It's possibly the worst and most insecure browser ever released to the public, and for that serious lapse of judgment, Apple should be held accountable.

Even if they don't have free will, right? Was it greed that made them do it or just laziness? Beta testing should be reserved for a product that has been thoroughly tested in-house.

Yes, even if they don't have free will. They could have been honest and called it Alpha. Moral responsibility is not incompatible with strict determinism. As to why they did it, I suppose it was for media coverage and to try to increase Safari web user share from its meager 3%. Whether I believe they should be held accountable doesn't change the outcome of Apple's poor judgment. Like I said, Apple has shot itself in the foot on this one, and if you can't see that, hold tight because it will become more evident in the coming weeks.

The download site now presents version 3.01 (though it isn't stated).
This has fixes for security issues that have been flagged.

I have to say, being a beta tester myself for other products, that Safari does not seem to be inadequately developed for a beta status!

I think one has to be a bit of a masochist to be a beta tester. I quit doing that back in the '80s. Back away from the bleeding edge!

For clarification, I'm not saying Safari is completely worthless. I'm just saying that this beta release of Safari is practically worthless and that it falls so far behind other browsers it's laughable. How they can claim to be the "World's best browser" is ludicrous since it's barely a web browser at all; yes, it loads html pages, but can't render Java or Flash correctly, and doesn't do much else. For the sake of competition, I hope Apple improves a lot on Safari. But I'm not expecting much from Apple since they have made it clear for many years now that they value eye candy over functionality. For Windows, Firefox is the best browser, hands down.