and

the mail client is pretty awesome in the way mails are indexed and searchable.

My wife has tried it, but it seems to have issues with attachments for Yahoo mail.

Unfortunately, we get stuck in a Firefox and Google rut, and forget all of the browsers and search engines available.

Like a lot of people pointed out, Opera is great for Mobile devices. It's also full of features. Some(me) would say a little too many things get packaged in there.

For me, FF just represents the open source movement and it really is a good browser. That's why I use it.

I'm not an annoying anti-Microsoft guy but IE6 was a really bad browser. Now that they catched up, it's decent but I still prefer others.

Chrome just got in the spotlight because its made by Google. If Google made a toothpaste, it would give Colgate a run for their money ;-)

Contra Opera I hear from friends:

No Adblock plus (yet blocking of contents and personal CSS-files which of course can block contents),

Closed Source,

no proper proxy-handling,

bad add-on-functions. But who needs add ons:

pros:

needs less ram than ff or ie,

mouse gestures (you can surf completely without clicking buttons),

easy to use and customizable search function ("g geeks" looks at google for geeks, w geek at wikipedia. and because it's easy customizable "ga geeks" looks for geeks at google but excludes all advertisement-pages, l geek looks at a dictionary for geeks…),

customizable gui (you can put everything everywhere and even create own buttons),

great full-screen usability (yes, you can make it better than just showing a page full screen…

limit sites to screen width,

included notepad, irc-, bt-, rss- and mail-client,

fast access to bookmarks (cx loads the page of my local cinema),

instead of a starting page you can install a speed dial page with your preferred pages (thumbnails updated periodically or static, easy to access while surfing with strg+1-9),

spell checking while writing messages…..

An optional proxy that delivers the images of sites compressed (for slow internet connections)

… (there in fact is more)

Opera is just great. Just give Opera one or two weeks and you'll love it.

DragonFly – counterpart to Firefox's Firebug. It's built in nicely into Opera 10

Remappable shortcut keys – you can download a scheme that maps Opera shortcuts so that it's similar to emacs

Good download manager – from time to time, I even use it to download torrents

What I miss from using firefox:

Delicious plug-in – In opera, you can add a button/shortcut to access your delicious bookmarks, but it doesn't feel as 'native' as delicious over at firefox

Rendering – Forms, etc doesn't always mix with the Mac's L&F

Adblock Plus – There's a simple pop-up blocker. I've read it can block some ads as well, though never really gotten to make work as good as adblock plus.

Usability wise, I still prefer Firefox. If only it weren't such a memory hog. Awaiting Google Chrome (final) on the Mac.

As for the reason Opera seems left behind in the US, my guess is that most people are familiar with IE and FF and see no reason change and take the time to learn to use a new browser as effectively as they use their current one. Almost everybody knows about IE and FF already, and there's been a lot of talk online about the fairly new Chrome, but Opera is often left out of these discussions. Many people simply don't know about it. And sadly, once they do, there's nothing really big to encourage a switch. To compare these to cars, IE would be a Ford Taurus; it's been around for a while, it gets the job done, but the only people that still use it are the ones that really know it and don't want to use something new. FF would be a Honda Civic; starts pretty boring, but you can tune it any way you want with aftermarket parts.It is, in essence a Toyota Corolla. Chrome is like a Prius; new ideas and technology, and an increasingly trendy pick for its efficiency. Opera, sadly, is any minivan; it'll get you from A to B, do it safely, reliably, and fairly efficiently, but they only time it stands out is when somebody is pointing and laughing because you didn't get something trendier or sportier.

As for their desktop version, meh. I don't like it. Also very much a Firefox guy.

However, once I got it working I found it to be the best handheld web browser I have seen (it beats the Berry browser hands-down). Performance on my Wi-Fi only device is acceptable, and even advanced pages with CSS render well.

http://lifehacker.com/5352195/browser-speed-tests…

I use FF for general browsing (because of all the cool add-ons), Opera for anything secure (because I believe it to be the most secure for online business) and IE only if the site I am trying to access demands it. I never use Chrome, but have installed it on my mom's computer because of its simplicity (read – "Less things to mess around with and break.")