A great option for the casual web user... (Opera Web Browser)

Member Name: chocomint

Product:	Opera Web Browser
Date:	28/10/08 (183 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pleasing appearance, good speed and has all features you would need for general internet usage

Disadvantages: Setup issues at times

I used to be a hard-core believer in IE (5-6) for most of my internet browsing years. In fact, for a good part of that time, I was not even aware there were other browsers out there. The popularity of Firefox caught my attention somewhere down the line and I started to use that as well, but the good user experience and familiarity I had with IE found me always getting drawn back to it. That was until about a year and a half ago a friend of mine suggested I try out Opera, and it was love at first sight!

Note, the version I am reviewing here is 9.61 (Help -> About Opera get's you to where the version is shown)

***What I liked about it***

Speed Dial:
This was a feature I really found useful and I could say one of the main reasons I decided to switch to Opera almost full time. As a casual web user there are a few sites that I visit about 80% of the time, such as dooyoo, my yahoo and gmail accounts and of course google.com! I'm sure this is true for most other web-users as well. The Speed Dial allows you to save up to 9 of these pages in a cool panel sort of view that come up every time you open a new tab. So you can either click on one of the thumb-nail views showing the web-site you want to go to, or type in the URL in the address bar if it's another site.

Retains Settings saved in IE:
So I don't need to start saving all my favorites web-sites again from the beginning! It made the transition from IE to Opera really smooth and pain-free.

Easy to create new browser tabs:
Since my switch to Opera was from IE 6, which did not support tabbed browsing, and the only other browser I had used that supports tabbing was Mozilla (which I found the procedure for creating a new tab to be a bit cumbersome in terms of the number of clicks required, and I am accustomed to having many browser windows open at a time), I found it very easy to add and use a new browser tab.

Sleek look-and-feel:
The browser has a nice sleek appearance, and does not take too much real-estate for menus, address-bar, toolbars etc... by default. I also found the black navigation panel quite appealing to the eye.

***What I did not like about it***

Setup issues:
After I installed a new version of it recently, it simply refused to open, and kept giving me an error. This was a complete turn-off and I gave up after a while. I was able to later on do some searching on the error and fix the problem by re-naming the file in installs itself in to under the Program Files directory of my computer, but this might not be the best way of fixing this problem in case you get it. By the time however, I had switched to using a different browser.

A few sites are still not supported:
I have encountered a negligible few under this category, but that's not to say there aren't any.

***Summary***

Overall, as mentioned in the title, I think this is a great web-browser for the casual internet user. By "casual internet user" I am not referring to the amount of internet usage, but more so the number of web-browser utilities that are taken advantage of. Therefore, even someone who is online 24 hours a day could still be a casual internet user.

The browser has a pleasing appearance, works reliably and provides the optimal features you would require for day-to-day browsing. However, if you're up to it, I would certainly recommend you try out the other browsers out there for yourself and decide what the best fit for you is.

Summary: Give it a shot! There's a good chance you will decide to keep it!

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