Opera - Definitely the Fastest Browser on Earth!. Review on Opera

Opera - Definitely the Fastest Browser on Earth!

Have invalid page faults and repeated errors in Internet Explorer driven you mad? Or are you annoyed by Netscape Navigator's sluggishness? If your answer to any of these is in the affirmative then it's high time you tried Opera.

What is Opera?

Opera is a fast, secure, configurable, and standards compliant Web browser. Opera gives you the liberty to run numerous windows without opening up other instances and many more features that make it 'the' choice for a serious Web enthusiast. Opera comes with lots of features, including 128-bit encryption, improved security for your online transactions, cookie management and many more.

Most of the people reading this review must be using IE or Netscape right now. Nothing wrong in it. Once upon a time I too used to periodically swap between these to browsers. But Opera changed it all. Now I use Opera all the time and Mozilla once in a while.

What made me try Opera for the first time?

First and foremost I must thank both IE and Netscape for it was these two browsers that annoyed me to the limit as a result of which I started using Opera.

Netscape is painfully slow to load as it is filled with irrelevant features. (The latest versions are worse than the older versions). Browsing too is quite slow. IE is slightly faster but it brings with it infinite Invalid Page Faults and Errors. IE, as you would all agree crashes too often and also brings down the OS with it.

Features of Opera that keep me hooked on to it.........

Speed - Opera or as it is aptly called 'The fastest browser on earth!', roars through the Net. It is definitely the fastest of all browsers. All people who have used Opera at least once would agree with me. The loading too is quite fast. Try opening a html file first with IE then with Opera. The difference in speed is practically visible.

Interface - is simple yet attractive. One handy feature is the integration of several search options such as Google, AllTheWeb, Amazon.com, Opera Support Search, Image Search, Video Search, Mp3/Audio Search, Google Groups Search and many more into the browser. That means there is no need to go to google.com to invoke a search. Support for skins is available.

Stability - All of us have experienced the agony of IE crashing when we are seriously browsing. Believe me you will never face this problem with Opera.

In the past 1.5 years that I have been using Opera, it hasn't crashed a single time! On the contrary, once when I tried to crash it intentionally by trying to open hundred odd html files instantaneously it didn't crash nor did it hamper system functioning. It simply terminated.

If the computer shuts down due to power failure, the next time you launch Opera it provides you with an option to continue browsing from where you stopped last time. This means the precious URL of the sites you were browsing is saved automatically.

Periodic Reloading of a Page - You can see to it that Opera reloads every web page every 5 minutes, or whatever duration you want. This is useful for accessing information from a site that updates itself often. E.g.: Live cricket scores, Share prices, etc. Some Web pages set an expiration time for themselves. You can choose to reload the page only if it has expired.

Status Bar -Opera tells you everything it is doing. It tells you the percentage of the page that is being loaded, time taken, bytes loaded, speed, no of images loaded and no of images present on the particular page etc.

Other Features -Opera loads text first followed by images. This increases the speed

Opera allows image toggling (like IE). You can turn the image option off so that the pages get displayed without images, thus speeding your browsing. By keeping this option on you can see to it that the pages are displayed with images. Clicking a small button from within the open window can do all this.

The package of bookmarks given is excellently organized and carefully selected.

Auto completion of location bar and forms is supported. Auto completion feature also shows the date and time the site was last browsed.

Some sites may intentionally/unintentionally block some browsers. To overcome this problem you are provided with an option to identify your browser to the site as Mozilla, IE or Opera itself.

You can specify as to what is supposed to be done with pop up windows. You can accept, refuse or open it in the background.

While saving web pages you can either save with images or without. It is quite handy.

Letdowns.................

Firstly it is adware. The free version of Opera comes with a banner ad.

The most common complaints about Opera are about its Email Client and Download Client both of which are supposedly not good enough. As I don't use either of these I can't comment. People say it doesn't integrate with download managers. Flashget (Checkout my review on it), which in my opinion is the best download manager integrates well with Opera with the help of a freely downloadable plug-in.

The Verdict

'Go for it' - I dare say that very soon Opera will become more popular than IE or Netscape.

General Info

Version - 6.01

Pre Installation Size - 10.7 MB (with Java)

Post Installation Size - 12.8 MB

Website - https://opera.com/

Thanks for Reading

Kindly Rate the Review