Opera

Opera browser good for older computers

Though Opera has always been an underdog in the web browser arena, with a tiny (but devoted) share of the market, reviews say it's an excellent browser. At PC Magazine, editors give Opera the same rating as Firefox -- 4 on a 5-point scale -- but users give Opera an even higher rating. Tests find Opera 9.5 faster than earlier versions, well worth the upgrade. Opera 9.6 beta is an Editors' Pick at Softpedia, and earns praise in most reviews. At Ars Technica, reviewer Jeremy Reimer praises it as light, fast and feature-rich.

Opera 9.5 and 9.6 beta are free downloads, and both provide plenty of features. Opera's smaller file size makes it ideal for older computers. Like Firefox, it can be used on a Mac, and though Firefox is the top-ranked Mac browser, reviews recommend Opera for older Macs.

Opera is actually the first browser to have used tabs for browsing of more than one site at once, and reviews find its sidebar the most convenient to use. Tests at PC Magazine find that Opera 9.5 starts faster than Firefox 3, and conforms better to the latest Web standards. Once the browsers are started, however, Opera is much faster than IE7 and IE8, but slower than Firefox 3 and Chrome.

Opera claims to be the best browser for the environment because "Opera gives older computers a longer life, which means that fewer of them have to be disposed of before their time." Reviews agree that Opera takes so much less memory and CPU power that it's ideal for older or underpowered computers. This can make it a good option for machines that came equipped with earlier versions of Internet Explorer that need upgrading for security reasons -- since IE7 and IE8 take huge amounts of memory (and are slower as well). Opera is also a smaller application -- just 4.4 MB. That's especially impressive since Opera builds in e-mail, chat, notepad, RSS feeds and file-sharing -- plus voice commands and a voice reader.

Reviews say security is excellent. It's also easy to customize. You can add a site's internal search to Opera, so you can search eBay, Amazon.com or similar sites from inside Opera. You can also block specific content from a site. The "speed dial" feature lets you use a single mouse click to navigate to the web pages you visit most.

Opera provides excellent synchronization features. You can host your bookmarks on an Opera site, for example, so they're easy to synchronize among all the computers you use -- including a cell phone that uses the free Opera mobile browser, called Opera Mini.

Opera 9.5 builds in shortcuts, mouse gestures and button options that speed common tasks -- copy and paste, for example. The new QuickFind feature bases results on history -- actually searching inside the pages you've visited. The review at PC Magazine finds the equivalent feature in Firefox quicker to use, however, by a click or two. The Firefox download and password managers are also judged superior -- and of course, the wealth of extensions gives Firefox another advantage.