The Opera browser has long been the connoisseur's browser of choice, even when you had to pay cash money for it. These days it's running neck and neck with Firefox (Or whatever they're calling it today...), but it's still just about holding its own.

Opera's strong point has always been its speed. These days it contains a certain amount of bloatware like everything else, but it still outstrips the competition. Less well recognized, but in my opinion far more useful, is the ability to load several windows in the same frame. You may think you can load as many windows as you like with any browser, but the difference is this. All the sites you've accessed are in the same window. Your computer is taking far less of a hit, and if you have, say, 20 windows open, they're all right there, listed above the address bar. No more clicking back through a dozen windows to find the one you want.

If you're really nifty with a mouse, Opera also supports mouse gestures. These are little flicks that you can make with the mouse while pressing the middle button, which replace keyclicks or icon searching. I'm none to good at it, but I've got 'Go back' off to a 'T'. It's just so handy for online auctions and competitions!

It has the most comprehensive cookie control of any browser. I'm not going to list all the options here, but suffice to say it's very satisfying to be able to accept one of those annoying cookies that won't let you into a site without it, but to tell Opera to delete it on shutdown.

Finally, it is an unexpectedly great boon, when you have an image or something that's too big for your screen, to be able to just click on it, and tap the '-' key a few times, and watch it shrink to fit, or to come across one of those sites with unreadable munchkin print, and just click on it and press '+' a few times and watch it grow. One word of warning. Do not use this feature while surfing ladies underwear sites.

You'll have your eye out.