I mentioned earlier, that I endorsed IE7 Beta 2 Preview, but I should clarify that something seems wrong with the ClearType implementation. It is so bad for me, that I have had to turn it off.
Now I admit that I have a wimpy old home system (P3 1.1GHz), but the ClearType pages at Microsoft say that I should have seen an improvement. There is a new IEBlog entry today talking about this. Try it and see if it will improve things for you. I think it will likely be a wash on more modern hardware, but it is unworkable for me on my nearly ancient system.