Opera Software Opera 8.0

Have been a fan of opera for years now. The best browser I have experienced and I have tried about 30. Feels faster than "fire"fox and microsoft especially with javascript turned off. Low memory footprint by comparison too.

Glitches such as sometimes when I click on an email I have to click away and then back to bring up the contents. Also I cannot delete some emails. Sometimes have to tell opera to emulate microsoft internet explorer in order for some websites to work.

I've just spent an interesting few days with a Technical Service Consultant for Opera Software.

He has a very effective way of handling support problems.

1) Don't ask the customer for specifics of his system, setup or anything which might be involved with the functioning of Opera.

2) Assume that the customer doesn't know anything.

3) Keep referring the customer to FAQ entries he's found that qualify for the subject you've requested help on.

While this makes his job quite easy, it does little to help a customer (a paying one, remember, the Premium Service Support requires money. This isn't like we're talking about Mozilla or some other open source contributor staffed enterprise). It does even less to enhance Opera's image as a quality based software company (remember, this _is_ a company, .com, not an organization, .org).

My problems ranged from a myriad of problems with the mail facility included in Opera to the browser's inability to make use of the Adobe plugin on my system (which every other capable browser I tried found and made use of with no difficulty).

In the end I requested a refund (with no response) and trash canned Opera and moved on to a tab based, secured wrapper for IE for Microsoft dependent use, and downloaded Firefox for general use. Both of these are free and what little support I've needed hasn't been nearly as painful as one tenth of my troubles with Opera and their technical support guy.

If you're happy with Opera, stay with it, but don't spend the money on the support or added features, they're a myth!

OperaMail is still in the stone age as far as its interface goes! No HTML composition. Cannot import complete data from common existing email clients (E.G. Netscape/Mozilla). Cannot save emails without 3rd party software. And more...

OperaMail composition is very rudimentary, with only a 70's-80's interface (yes, I mean 70's, it's just crude text manipulation, not even decent line/word wrap)

Add to this an arcane and ill-defined method of 'classifying' mails ('filters'??) to obviate the need of folders. Give users (virtual) folders anyway.. they don't need to know they don't actually exist. It's a cleaner categorizing interface. After all folders/directories on operating systems are virtual.

Granted, Opera may be a good browser, but it's got a long way to go to be serious about today's email.

For your USD 39, you get no ads, and 6 months of Premium Webmail. Oh, and you can submit Premium Support requests. Not that it does much good, they just affirm that they know nothing more than the so-called 'Help' (actually just a link to a limited FAQ and user forums).

It's curious how they can be set up so much like an open software organization (i.e., Mozilla), and still have the nerve to have a .com address and charge you money!

If I'd known all this before I purchased Opera... But then, why should they advertise such obvious weaknesses? I purchased for value added, not just another browser!