Title: Members' Experiences

Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator seem to have carved up the browser market a couple of years ago, unfortunately, no one told Opera Software in Norway - www.opera.com. The Opera browser may not have the market domination of the other two but it is getting an increasing amount of attention.

I first installed Opera 4.something on my Psion Revo - although I see version 5 is now available. While it is an achievement to get a browser to run in 8Mb of RAM it is not as impressive to use. The browser seems fine at displaying HTML pages but anything other than the most basic pages demanded that I shutdown all other application and even then I got "not enough memory" error. (Maybe if I remove the spell checker and SimCity things may be better.) But at 9600 baud browsing is a painful experience, in fact I gave up. The reliability of my connection meant it was almost impossible to be used.

Opera for EPOC includes a 30-day evaluation license. I stopped using it and removed it before the end of the 30 days. I'll try again when I get round to upgrading to a Revo Plus where it is in ROM.

The Revo's own e-mail client is excellent even at 9600 baud. Psion have put thought into this and while the connection is obviously slow it is very usable. Primarily this is because the e-mail client only downloads the message headers by itself; you get to see the message author, title and size before download the message in full. On a fast connection this would be a bind, but on a slow connection it's essential: I know who I want to hear from, and I know that I don't want to download a 900k message because it's probably a GIF.

But to return to Opera. Version 5.0 has been made available for free, however, unlike AOL and Microsoft, Opera do not have vast financial reserves and cannot use it as a loss leader so it is actually adware. If you choose to use the free version the browser will show a banner ad in the top right hand of the browser windows. It will cache some ads to show when off line.

Opera are emphatic that this is not "spy ware", ads are provided by the Cydoor agency but Opera does not report your surfing details - they describe this in full on their web site. Personally I believe them and think it's a good way to market a product provided, as with Opera, I can choose to pay my $39/£25 and have a version of the software which does not show adverts.

Unfortunately, having spent a couple of months using the adware version of Opera I find myself returning to Internet Explorer. I say unfortunately because I really like Opera for several reasons:

But Opera suffers from several drawbacks that as far as I can tell are not Opera's fault. They have to do with web sites. They expect Explorer or Navigator and are customised and tested for these. For example, while I could access my Internet banking with Opera the frames where incorrect and I couldn't use most of the functionality or log off properly.

This wasn't the only site I had trouble with, booking flights with Expedia caused problems and at times other sites would just "not work." I assume the common theme is that they relied on Explorer specific features.

Opera has one annoying feature that could be fixed. Explorer and Navigator seem to render pages as soon as the HTML is downloaded and fill in the images later. Opera seems to wait for the images before showing anything. As one who frequently clicks while only the basic text is available this really annoyed me. With a slow server it may appear that nothing has been received, yet hit escape and a usable page is rendered.

I want to see Opera succeed but it seems it isn't usable as your only browser. So I'll be keeping Explorer, Navi-gator and Opera installed on my machine and continue sweeping for cookies.