The columns are fine but I'd suggest opening up the white space a tad... maybe 20px left to right with 10px between the columns. As far as the footer, I don't think it's a good placement to have it in with the columns. It should really be separate and I think the font is large for links and copyright information... that can be fixed by adding those attributes to the css code for the footer.
You might also want to put a little space between sections of content in those columns... a single line break would be sufficient, really.
divs can be evil creatures, especially if they aren't defined with absolute sizes and positioning. What I see in IE might be totally different from what one would see in firefox or some other browser, but I can see that there is a problem with how it is showing. You might try manipulating the padding attributes for better placement. You have 0 for the left padding, no margins, or any other defining characteristics that help text placement.
Since I don't think it's a good placement for the footer, I'd suggest creating a div outside the container div and see if you get better results. If you're adamant about where it's placed now, then I'd suggest resizing the font for a better fit. There's only so much you can fit into that left over space because the container div has absolute properties (ie. width:600px)