Saw this post on IEBlogs yesterday, to some people it may look like a late arrival of a long awaited feature but people tend to forget that the boundary between Internet Explorer & Windows Explorer is almost invisible. Besides Internet Explorer is primarily an engine and then a browser, if you ask me!
I find Maxthon to be the most feature complete, performormance efficient & versatile browser out there for the average Windows user. Although being a Web Developer I almost always have IE, FireFox & Opera running on my work machine and even on my home machine whenever I'm online.
Anyways seems that Parental Controls seem to offer a basic form of AdBlocking + Blacklisting functionality, however it would be really helpful if both these functionalities are available separately outside the shell of Parental Control as well.
Like I said I already am a Maxthon fan and it's not going to change even on Vista. But for people who don't have kids, or are the sole users of their PCs / Laptops who aren't informed enough or have other issues (Like restrictions within enterprise environments) it will be really good if such a feature is available for them.