Agreed on the hosts file improvement - ad blocking can tremendously help on some sites. I'd recommend using Advoid if you don't want to bother to get root, manually download and edit the hosts file. Advoid can do all this for you, and it's a lot easier. Check the application downloads/repositories for it.
Install advoid, it will provide you with hosts file ad-blocking, works wonderfully.
Install tear, it is still far from being able to replace microb, but it is good and faster for some websites.
I found it an excellent replacement - what were you missing that Tear wasn't providing?
It provides still too many bugs, too
Just from the top of my head:
Clicks links when you are drag-scrolling: impossible to use it on certain pages, and very uncomfortable on most pages.
Emits long clicks when scrolling in frame scroll bars, makes it very hard to use it on certain pages.
Can't save web pages: Quite inconvenient when you have found something and want to preserve it, or just analize the html
Flash movies playing without having to wait till it has been fullyt downloaded.
The download management is terrible, if you do anything when downloading something, the download will stop and won't restart
Download manager doesn't remember the directory where you are saving things, forcing you to navigate the directory tree every time.
