CNET Editors' review
Opera 9.50 maintains the program's tradition of striving for the fastest, smallest, and most full-featured browser available. Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, a customizable search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple integration with e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality round out the essentials.
Opera's extras push it to the top of the class. Integrated theme support previews themes from within the interface, and the new version sports a default redo that's an attractive balance between "dark" and "light" themes. Opera's desktop widgets can appear anywhere while Opera is running. The Wand utility combines autofill with saved passwords, and it's hard to ignore the addition of torrent support and real-time fraud protection. The latest version includes reasonable anti-malware protection courtesy Haute Secure.
The expanded features in 9.50 should make any non-believer do a double-take. Opera Link enables Bookmarks, the Personal bar, Speed Dial, and Notes synchronization across all other Opera instances. Quick Find improves the search tool, allowing for full text searching from the address field, the history panel, and opera:historysearch. The Status bar has been restored as a default, the Wand now lets users confirm a successful login before saving credentials, and spatial navigation--similar to Opera Mini and the Wii browser--has been introduced.
The new version is faster, has multiple back-end changes to handle code better, and overall we think Opera has what it takes to unseat even the biggest-name browsers. You just need to hear it sing.
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Publisher's Description
From Opera Software:
Opera aims to product the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time online. The latest release is even faster with superior support for Web standards. Opera 9.5 is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages and better at running your favorite Web applications. New features include Quick Find, which remembers not only the titles and addresses, but the actual content of the Web pages you visit, and Opera Link, which lets you access your favorite Web sites everywhere you go on all your computers and cell phones.
Version 9.5 introduces new features Quick Find and Opera Link, adds a redesigned Address bar drop-down menu, and includes new storage and indexing formats for Opera Mail, among a bevy of other features, changes, and fixes.
What's new in this version: Version 9.5 introduces new features Quick Find and Opera Link, adds a redesigned Address bar drop-down menu, and includes new storage and indexing formats for Opera Mail, among a bevy of other features, changes, and fixes.
More Popular Web Browsers downloads
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- Opera
13,336 downloads
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All versions:
4.4 starsout of 3,573 votes
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Current version:
4.2 starsout of 99 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"Crashes A Lot"
Version: Opera 9.5
Cons
It kept crashing after I opened more than one tab, a waste of time. After it crashed, I would open the browser again and the same thing would happen, this happened four times before I uninstalled it and went back to Firefox.
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"Hate it!"
Version: Opera 9.5
Cons
I have a Dell laptop XP Pro. This gives me nothing but 502 gateway error msgs or similar. Can't search for anything without getting error msgs. The theme of this must have been from Darth Vader...the toolbar is all black as coal...can't make out what things are...nothing works.... Black is also symbolic of the devil. wish I had the old opera back. I am going back to my IE browser.
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"Good but not great"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
The availability of skins to download and the widgets make this browser great, probably better than FireFox. It is somewhat fast and easy to learn.
Cons
Opera is extremely buggy. Whenever I mistakenly hovered my mouse over the bookmarks, a large black square would cover the entire screen. Certain pictures did not show up, even when refreshing the page continously and changing preferences. Opera needs some work but it is overall a good browser.
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"Best browser I've tried!"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
The built in e-mail support makes this my browser of choice.
Cons
Lacks some of the add-on capabilities of FireFox, but is faster and causes far fewer lockups.
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"Nice software"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
very 1st & easy web browser
Cons
download not paused
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"Sweet!!!"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
I like to alternate between using Firefox 3.0 and Opera 9.50. I use them 50:50. I prefer Firefox for my heavy lifting browser when I need the plug ins and Roboform for online shopping and applications and require high security for download virus scans. Opera is my leisure browser when I am looking for quick performance, start ups and easy surfing and lightness. I like Opera's interface and attractive skins plus speed dial. It sleek and fast and light on resources.
Cons
Opera is not supported by Roboform and Sirius Satellite radio player. Some sites do load properly with Opera. It lacks some of the Firefox add on's and plug in's that I sometimes rely on.
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"Not Comfortable With Opera"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
I like it in that it is kind of fast , but not as fast as Firefox or Safari. At least not as fast on my computer. It is a complete browser. has what one needs and I like that
Cons
I find it more difficult to operate and to make the proper adjustments needed. i have tried new versions when they come out and have just never found a version compatible with me. it is a more difficult browser than the others I have had.
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"funny people, funny opera"
Version: Opera 9.5
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"Very fast browser but porous against spyware"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
Probably the fastest browser I have worked with.
Cons
What I did is cleaned my computer with Adaware and then opened up Opera and went to several websites. I then measured "the infections" from using Opera and there was anyway from 21 to 40 data mining and data collecting cookies. Then cleaned those infections off. I opened Mozilla Firefox and went to the same web sites and same webpages. Then ran adaware again and found two infections from using Firefox.
Summary:
I do like Opera 9.5's speed-no doubt about that but the serious lack of being able to keep spyware off my machine causes me to bypass for my general web browsing travels.................jh
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"Innovative"
Version: Opera 9.5
Pros
The speed dial feature is great. It's lightning fast.
Cons
It doesn't work with most online mail accounts and it doesn't support some online videos.
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