Guy Stuff at Guys Clubhouse

Well Opera 10.54 is out. I’ve heard good things about it so I thought I’d go back and give Opera another chance. If you’ve read my previous post a while back, you know I tested version 10.50 and it was very unstable. But it was smoking fast and so is this one.

Opera comes with an amazing list of features such as:

Integrated email that will send rich text ( the integrated email is one of my favorites )
Chat
Spell check
Speed dial
Tab browsing and tab preview
Turbo option for slower connections
Password manager
Notes
Malware and fraud protection
Opera Link for synchronizing bookmarks
Opera Unite to share content directly with friends
Mouse gesture recognition
Widgets that go beyond the browser and live on the desktop

and the list goes on and on…

Now I’ve only been using it a couple of days so I won’t recommend it yet, but so far I am totally impressed and would rate it a ten out of ten. Super fast with email and a ton of toys, I’ll be living in this thing!

After reading Opera had released a  new beta last Thursday and it was reported to be  super fast, I had to download and try it. I’ve always thought Opera to be an incredible browser and people, this beta is a rocket!!  Hold on, let me backup  for a second.

I used Opera for about a year. ( see my previous post here )   I loved my Opera. I think it’s fantastic the way the email has been integrated. The security features are good.  The interface is easy enough and skinning  is simple ( although some cooler skins would be nice ). I could go on for an hour about why I liked that program,  but let’s get to the meat of things here.  Opera seemed to get slower and slower with every update. When we updated to 10.10, it became what we considered unusable. Yes, of course it was usable. But for us guys, needing instant gratification, it was over. I changed to firefox. It is faster than Opera 10.10, but other than that, it doesn’t really excite me. Which brings me back to  Opera 10.50 beta.

It was very unstable as is to be expected with a new beta. And I only used it for a short time because when I tried to skin it, well, let’s say it didn’t like it. But holly sh..t, it was fast. I mean, the fastest I HAVE EVER  SEEN! I’m not sure the average computer user would want to download this right now, and if you do, I’d say try it without the skins.  But I am very excited after taking this for a spin. Going from something so slow to this really blew me away. In a few months, I’ll be putting Firefox to bed, and once again be using the best Browser!! Opera.

Well, crap. After using Opera for a year now, I’m afraid I’ll have to say good by to it for a time.  Not that I don’t like it, in fact I love it! But after the last few updates it has  simply gotten to slow. For some reason, it insist on running my CPU up to 70 and 100%.  Now, my computer is not new, granted, but I don’t think a p4 with 2 gigs of ram and a 3GHz processor should be subjected to that.  I was getting aggravated with it a bit for the last couple of months but today was it. I can’t even watch a vid on youtube anymore with out it freezing up on me and my CPU winding out to 100%.  The program is great! I love having my email integrated with my Browser, and the wand feature to log into my stuff is great! I’ve read the forums and sad to say, I’m not the only one having this trouble. So, I’ll have to say good by for now, but really look forward to coming back to it when they get it right.  In fact, if you have a new computer, I highly recommend you try it just for fun.  You may have better luck than I did.