TOR - The Onion Router

As promised, here a few words about TOR - The Onion Router.
Once it is installed, it starts up whenever the computer boots. A window on the desktop shows the status. You can minimize it to the taskbar. When minimized you can still turn it on and off. All that runs without a hitch.
What is a bit disconcerting is that Firefox displays "Tor deactivated" in its status bar even though Tor says it is running in its own window.
The reason is apparently that Tor is not really compatible with Firefox 3. I'll have to wait for a newer version for that... This is a bummer because I rarely use Internet Explorer. Firefox seems to contain fewer security risks.
All in all it looks like it works well - but there is no way for me to gage if it really does provide a certain amount of privacy... or if it just takes up space.