Is Opera worth another look?

[edX]

ok, a new version of opera was just released recently and i have been playing with it a bit. it seems to have gained a littel speed and has gotten much more aqua. That seems like a good combo to me. it still isn't as fast as icab but it now looks almost as good as omniweb.

i don't know if it was something i did or what, but my last two versions of this no longer have advertising banners which helps. I also found that increasing the minimum font size helps viewing a lot - especially when posting here.

i have had icab and opera up and running simultaniously and just sort of hopping around and comparing. Opera renders the best. i see things that don't even show up in icab on some sites. icab is faster about 80-90% of the time. but every now and then i hit a page that opera flies through that icab stumbles a bit on. both have been stable with multible windows open and running at the same time. Both seem to download at about the same speed and maintain the connection.

so 1) can anybody think of any other comparisons i should be thinking about as i consider going back to opera for a while and 2) has anybody else tried the latest release of opera? if so, what are your opinions of the improvements in it?

you can go here if you would like to download it.

 

[genghiscohen]

The new releases of Opera let you run it banner-free for 30 days. After that, it's either pay or endure the banners.

 

[voice-]

You should try the awesome speeds of Mozilla...just kidding, I know you hate it.

But seriously, if you can live with iCabs bad looks then by all means, stay with it. Opera is pretty lightweight, so if you download it and it is crap you haven't lost much.
However it pissed me off to see Netscape was finally ready for Mac OS X, downloading a 17Mb file over 56k to find it was the same slow dumb rock as it was in OS 9.

 

[Drizzt]

I've found the new version to still be a little bit on the unstable side. for instance I was d/ling something and decided to start web browsing again. Well Opera didn't want to do that and it crashed. Thank heaven for protected memory. Speedwise it seems ok though I still feel Moz has a little edge over it. Overall it's making progress but it just doesn't seem to be progressing quick enough yet and the fact that this is still a beta is a small disapointment since the OS 9 version has been a final one for a few months now.