Opera - worth a purchase? Objective opinions only please! (1 Viewer)

[Greg Rakaska]

Due to various security and "whacky bug" concerns with IE 5&6, I have decided to try the free version of Opera. However, the constantly flashing advertisement banner is so annoying to me that I doubt I can use it long enough to give it an in-depth test.

I am interested in hearing honest, objective opinions regarding Opera vs IE.

Please no "Microsoft Sucks!" type of response. I am well aware of all the "Evil Empire" reasons to not use IE. I am interested in hearing why it is a better product from a funtionality, speed, ease-of-use perspective.

Thanks!

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

I paid for it and haven't regretted it.

First reason - speed. It renders the pages quickly and more importantly, the user interface is much more responsive than IE.

That is especially important to me, since I like to enter web addresses manually. With Opera, it is lightning fast - just hit CTRL-N and type the address. Opera moves the cursor directly to the address line and you don't need to touch the mouse. Not so in IE. Also, in Opera you get that new browser window in no time at all, almost; in IE, the hard drive churns and you have to wait many seconds before you even have the new window... and you have to click on the address line if you want to type in it.

Also, having the windows internally in the browser is a big selling point for me. I tend to have many windows open at a time. For instance, I have all the HTF forums set up as direct bookmarks in a subfolder in my bookmarks. To read all the forums I'm interested in, I just select the folder in the bookmarks and select "Open all folder items". Opera then opens all the windows and starts loading content into them (this is most useful if you're on a speedy connection, of course).

I'm also a pack rat when it comes to bookmarks. On other browsers it was getting hard to find stuff I knew was in there, in spite of having them fairly well organized in subfolders. In Opera 6 we got the bookmark search feature... and boy did that speed things up.

Mouse gestures are cool, but I haven't felt the need to learn them yet. Some people swear by them though.

I love having search windows in my personal bar in Opera. At any given time I can just enter what I want to search for at either Google or Google Groups, my two main search engines. Very handy.

Those are just a few of the more obvious things about Opera that make it a superior browser, IMHO.

 

[Steve_Ch]

I have a paid version of Opera, but I don't use it hardly at all (I started with 5.x and now is on 6.x).

It is faster than IE, but not to the extend that it really makes a significant difference. It is more secure, but may not be because it's better written, I suspect the major reason is for every one person that hacks or looks for holes in Opera, there is 1000 others doing it on IE.

The biggest downside is it does not work on some websites. Now, that's not necessarily their fault, it could well be that Opera is totally on Spec, but everybody test their website on Netscape and IE, so if IE or Netscape is "wrong", everybody will just do it the wrong way.

Al that said, I have not regretted paying the $40, as it is a very nice product, so it's kind of up to you.

For security concerns, you may looked into getting a mail client that's more robust than Outlook/Outlook Express, as there's where some of the biggest and persistent security holes are. Personally, I use another paid mail client, but the same problem applies, once in a long while, I will recieve an email that I can only read by firing up Outlook.