I’ve never been part of a tech war before.  I only bad-mouth Apple because Apple is so much fun to hate.  And I never knew enough about most programs to care passionately for one over others.  All that might be changing now.  I came across this article by Extreme Tech. In it, the reviewers compare three web browsers: IE 7, Firefox 2.0, and Opera 9.0.  Now, I must admit, I am not too technically savvy.  I know just enough not to make a complete doofus of myself.  I had never heard of Opera, at least not that I could recall.  Extreme   Tech chose Opera as their favorite new browser, so I decided to download it and give it a try.

Boy am I glad I did!  Opera is a blast to use.  It provides tab browsing, just like Firefox does and IE 7 will do.  But Opera feels like it is built around tab browsing.  Clicking on links that in Firefox or IE would open up new windows opens up new tabs automatically in Opera.  There is also a new tab button right next to the open tabs on the browser header: very handy.  Opera also comes with different skins; I chose a sleek, dark gray skin that looks pretty darn cool.

Probably my favorite Opera feature is the Widget feature.  Tons of widgets have been made available to run with/on Opera, and many are quite useful.  I currently have a search widget, a weather widget, and a to-do list widget.  But there are also time and date widgets, calculator widgets, and numerous game widgets.  I’m looking forward to trying more out.

So I think I’ll make the switch to Opera – unless anyone can give me good reasons why I should stick with Firefox or come back to IE once version 7 comes out.

I feel like I’m rediscovering the Internet all over again; last week I switched to WordPress for my blog, yesterday I set up a subscription to Bloglines and set up my feeds, and today I found Opera.  The Internet hasn’t been this exciting since, well, since I was in junior high and instant messaing on AOL – only we called it “talking online” back then.