How did you find out about (old) Opera?
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I knew Opera as a company since I was little, but I only used the browser about 5-6 years ago back in college.
FireFox was the browser alternative back then. But eventually, aside from a few add-ons I use till now, it's not really cutting it for me anymore. Then I tried Opera starting with version 9 and never looked back.
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I first started using Opera sometime in the mid 90's before or near the time I believe Microsoft came out with their first browser. I used Opera as my main browser until they switched from ver 12.1?. I now use several browsers with no favorites. Vivaldi looks promising I believe they deserve a round of applause for the hard work and time they put into this project so far.
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As a student I had a part-time job for a while with a quaint little Internet provider (twenty or so employees, most of them Apple fans (long before that became the norm), working out of a converted high-street bakery, trying to stand out from the Internet big boys, personal house calls to help people set up their mail or whatever, pizza for everyone on Fridays, etc.).
One of my colleagues, just before handing off the helpdesk for me to take over, showed me this interesting beta version of a browser made by a similarly quirky bunch of guys in Norway. Since half of the "work" on the helpdesk was killing time between calls, I played around with it a bit - although I remember I thought it was a bit of a mess with it's side-panel and multiple windows. This would have been the one of the first public betas - 2.10 or 3.0 I think (back in 1996 or 1997).
Then when I was doing work experience at a science/engineering lab in the middle of nowhere I was getting very frustrated trying to do my research and mail on the ancient PC they'd lumbered me with (an old 80286 or something, I think). Everything was so damned slow to load and run. Then I remembered that weird little browser which fitted on a floppy but ran very light. Downloaded it (3.21, probably) and was immediately hooked on the difference it made on that slow old machine.
Several keycracks later, and it was the browser of choice wherever I was working. Tried the first integrated mail client so I could drop Eudora. Was initially sceptical of but later in love with M2 - after that was a total Opera bore to anyone and everyone. :woohoo:
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dont remeber how i came over opera, but started using it at v3 and been using opera since then but now im starting to get more and more fond of vivaldi. So i will delete opera when vivaldi has some more features ++
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I think I read about it in a magazine column, and immediately liked it when I tried it. It replaced Netscape 4.7 as my primary browser I do remember I paid for a licence almost immediately to get rid of the banner advert. I also remember thinking that it was a bad sign when it went free; and ended up being proved right
I tried the the new "Opera" but it was so different to the old one that it was a waste of time. Have been using a mixture of Opera 12 and IE since then. So I hope Vivaldi will give me back the features I lost when real Opera died, and that it is successful.
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I read about Opera on the USENET back in the '90s. I had to download it several times before I got a good copy over an expensive β but totally unreliable! -- 2400bps dial-up connection with no hardware error correction. That took most of one evening and the early morning even with ZModem and software error correction.
Eventually I bought a 56K (not v.90) modem and after a few versions I ponied up for Opera 8 and never looked back until Opera 15. That had me staring at the screen in abject horror at what I thought for sure was a trojan horse and scrambling for the last system image with Opera 12. Yeah, they got me; made me look. It wasn't a trojan but I didn't know that until after wiping the drives and giving Drive Image a rather thorough workout. :dry:
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I also remember thinking that it was a bad sign when it went free; and ended up being proved right
Soooo⦠it only took about a decade for that bad sign to swiftly prove you right then...?!
@3Phase - I know it must have been a horrible experience, but I can't help finding your story funny! :lol: Why didn't you check the Opera website and forums first? You would have seen LOADS of evidence that Opera had turned its users' world upside down...
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I saw it advertised in a magazine; I think it was version 5 or 6 since I can't remember exactly. I bought a license and that was the beginning. I still use it and now with v.30 we're just about back where I can say it will become my default.
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[ @3Phase - I know it must have been a horrible experience, but I can't help finding your story funny! :lol: Why didn't you check the Opera website and forums first? You would have seen LOADS of evidence that Opera had turned its users' world upside downβ¦[/quote]
I've learned not to panic and I always know where my towel is. :whistle:
I used the Opera news server but hadn't checked it in a while and I had quit even looking at the Opera web forums because of the noise. It was about a half hour to pull the plug β don't even bother to try and shut down if you suspect malware, just find and load the CD, zero the drives and reload the OS and Data partitions. THEN I went to check out the Opera news server and web site to find out what the (HONK!) was going on.
Really? β¦ 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15? No wonder the poor thing didn't work.
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I got in during the 7.Bork edition. I was examining different browsers when that came up. Hated the others and decided to give Opera a shot. Love at first sight. Stayed the distance through every release, both good and bad. As useless features were added and old features changed. I used 12.16 until July of 2013 when many sites were getting harder to use with Presto. I still miss changing the buttons around and having such a deep connection with a browser. I had a minimalistic layout with no address bar and a small drop down menu on the right with my closed tabs bin. All the power was under the hood and made to work for me rather than Chrome trying to break my habits. I still hit F2 to open a popup address bar.
I've been using the new Opera and, while I like what they've started to do with it, I still miss the old days and hope to see my old customized Opera come back in Vivaldi. I don't want to live with a broken browser in my heart forever.
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At first I was using IE 6, because I didn't knew any better, but one time when I was in school in IT class, I saw on the PC next to me that Firefox was installed, when I tried it I got curious and I installed when I got home and I've been using it for a year or so. Then a friend of mine who was into computers was discussing something with me and he told me he was using a browser called Opera 9.24 or so and we were discussing the ups and downs of each, my main argument of Firefox being better was that it had add-ons that were really powerful and the adblock add-on blocked ads automatically instead of having me block ads one by one on each page, then refresh and block some more.
Over the years I've always had issues with browsers being either slow or not behaving the way I should, so since, say 2008, I've been trying out every browser that I've discovered on the internet. Opera, Firefox, Chrome, etc.
I never really got to like the old Opera, since it somehow didn't meet my expectations and to this day I don't understand how was it more customizable than Firefox. When I heard that Opera will be ditching Presto for Webkit, I've been checking every day for a release build to try out. Up till then I was constantly switching between Firefox and Chrome, but once Opera came out, and syncing was working, I've been using it until a week ago, when I got fed up with it, using the Blink engine, and yet not supporting as many features as Chrome and Chromium did. I would never use Chrome anymore, even though I used to be using for years.
But that inconsistent story aside, I'm really looking forward to Vivaldi reaching a milestone, where it is more stable to use for general usage. Even though it's my main and only browser now, it's been crashing on me like crazy as of lately.
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snooping download site and saw browser that had multi tabs (only one that did).
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I had heard of people on a forum I frequented swearing by Opera, so I tried it. This was around 2001, version 5. Wasn't really feeling itβ¦there were too many quirks and page compatibility left something to be desired. The biggest annoyance was that it was ad-supported. So I went back to IE (and Neoplanet, heh).
The next year I was having significant problems with IE (I suspect corrupted files) that frequently locked up my computer. I tried Opera again, this time version 6, and it had improved enough that I was willing to give it a chance. I fell in love with the customization, and kept using it even when IE (and other browsers) became options again. Yes, I pirated it, but I justified it to myself by evangelizing Opera whenever I could.
So unlike many (most?) here...I'm not an IT guy, I don't build PCs for fun, and I don't code. I was just a kid who found a browser that let me squeeze everything I could out of the web.
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I remember that I was fed up with the Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6. My brother told me that I should try Opera. I loved the tabs from the beginning. I am not sure if I started using Opera from version 5 or 6. I loved the Icons in Version 6 and those ridiculous huge 3d style icons in version 7. It looked so modern at the time.
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I remember that I was fed up with the Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6. My brother told me that I should try Opera. I loved the tabs from the beginning. I am not sure if I started using Opera from version 5 or 6. I loved the Icons in Version 6 and those ridiculous huge 3d style icons in version 7. It looked so modern at the time.
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Haha. Those nice 3d icons were massive, they took like 25% of my 800x640 resolution, but I loved them.
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I was fed up with Firefox and wanted a browser with a ton of features built-in while still being secure. Not sure exactly how I found out about the old Opera as it was a long time ago, but I think it was through Wikipedia?
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Read about Opera in a newspaper tech column in 1999 or 2000 & was testing various alternatives to IE. What sold me on Opera was their Operamail email client [which was later spun off & became part of Fastmail]. Glad to see Opera's functionality being revived with Vivaldi!
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It was a long time ago - version 3 shareware. It was on a cover disk of a magazine. Loved it straight away and when the trial expired, I bought a licence straight away.
I used it up to version 12. When the Blink version came out, and various features that I loved were missing (especially Notes), I uninstalled it and reverted back to 12. I didn't need yet another clone of Chrome.Vivaldi promises to be the browser that Opera should have become. Here's hoping.
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To be honest, I really don't know. I THINK a friend recommended it, but I'm not entirely sure about that. It had to be back in early 2002. So either Opera 5 or 6 was my first contact. I just got my internet connection at home and was trying out a lot of different browsers (even stuff like "Neo Planet", lol), but with Opera it was like "love on first sight" :lol: . At first I was a bit annoyed by the banner ad they still had back then (I used a keygen to get rid of it⦠:whistle: ), but I liked the browser a lot. Remember: Tabbed browsing was something entirely new back then! And I could even use Opera as a mail client! Wow!
Never touched a different browser after that.Well, since the day the unholy "Opera 15" was released. Still use Opera 12.17 at home, but I'm checking out Vivaldi at work.
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Good news for us Presto loyalists β Opera 12.18 has been released today!
No official changelog has been posted yet, but the installer says it is a security and stability update:
You can install it from within Opera 12.x as an update, or download it here: