Advantages: Fast. Small.
Disadvantages: It costs. It can not handle 'advanced' websites.

...Most people would not buy a car that couldn’t perform right hand turns, no matter the speed or the car nor the people who point out that you could turn left three times in order to go right. Opera is a fast car but, sadly, it can’t turn right. What am I talking about? Opera is a fast browser; it’ll download your webpages at a quicker rate than Netstuck or Explorer. Opera is a small browser; it does not take up much room on your hard disk. Opera, however, has its failings. There are too many pages out there on the Internet that are no longer written in basic HTML. In fact, JavaScript is becoming increasingly more embedded in standard HTML commands. Opera has problems with many of these so-called “fancy” extras. In fact, Ciao was one of the few big websites that I could find in which Opera did not have a problem. That is to say, I... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: A brilliant guide to opera for iniatiates and established fans alike
Disadvantages: Book may have too many pages for it's size (see it, you'll know what I mean) but dont let that put you off

...I've never been much of a fan of opera. Like most classical music it often suffers from giving the impression of being overlong, bombastic, pretentious and something that only "posh" people listen to. The cost of tickets to most performances especially Covent Garden only serves to exacerbate this. The only operas that I can sit all the way through are "Carmen" and "Madame Butterfly". However that should not put you off listening to the extremely wide range of music music extracted from their "complete opera" settings. This package is a superb introduction to opera from the excellent Naxos (www.naxos.com) organisation and is available at an extremely reasonable price (RRP 9.99 GBP). It consists of a 762 page book and a double CD with two and a half hours (38 pieces) of opera extracts selected from the Naxos catalogue. ~ The Book... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: It is a wonder of the World
Disadvantages: Not Applicable

...The Sydney Opera House, is an absolutely fantastic spectacle of the southern hemisphere and really just outlines how great Australia is. The Sydney opera house with its distinctive sculptural shells, must be one of the architectural masterpieces of the modern era. Every year, around 4.5 million tourists come to see it which istwice the number that visit the White House. It is the result of an international design contest won by Danish architect Joern Utzon in 1956, the massive structure perched on Bennelong Point (where an Aborigine named Bennelong held concerts for early colonists and natives) took nearly 17 years and $102 million to complete. Utzon, inspired by sails, mandarins, palm leaves and such, wasn't too concerned with mundanities like budgets, and left mid-project before his grand interior vision was realised. Hence... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: A nice relaxing album
Disadvantages: Needs an aquired taste

...1). CD Infomation: (a) - 3 CDS (72 tracks) (b) - Accompanying book (204 pages, commentary and background information in Italian, German, French and English) (c) - Language of opera - Italian (d) - Total running time, 161' 28" 2). Background to the Opera: Don Giovanni was one of Mozarts greatest opears, and as a result is one of the most popularfor all those who have a taste for the delights opera provides. Don Giovanni is all about an Italian Nobleman, Don Giovanni, who is a great womaniser. Consequently, Don Giovanni, has been remarked as a "light-hearted sexual promiscuity". Life for Don Giovanni is fine (a minimum of 6 girls a night!), however, after he rapes Donna Anna, and murders her father (the Commendatore) , after he challenges him to a duel once he discovers Don Giovanni at his game! From that point, Don Giovanni's luck... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Faster than IE7
Disadvantages: There are far better free browsers available

...To summarise "Not impressed". Whilst the speed of opera is a lot quicker than IE7, it is far from being as user friendly as other browsers available such as Firefox. User defined options I found far from being user friendly. The overall appearance of the browser I thought to be somewhat messy. I found myself having to search for commonly used features such as page back and forward buttons. Although they are located in the same general area as IE and Firefox, they are not exactly prominent. The add-ons (referred to by Opera as "Widgets") seem to be more along the lines of gimmicky items rather than being of any real practical value. For me the one thing that would make Opera more appealing would be the use of a spell checking "Widget", unless I have missed this feature, it did not seem to be available. My opinion of this browser would... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Sun Java rather than proprietary JREs. Lightning quick
Disadvantages: Doesn't support non standard pages...

...Opera 5.0 - The third way Whilst Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.5 seems undaunted by the threat posed by the allegedly faster new Netscape Navigator 6, which has proved to have been a bit of a false dawn in the browser war, there is a new kid on the block, or rather a new player as far as most people are concerned. Opera, hitherto a non freeware browser, has gone freeware, or rather partially freeware. Opera is afterall only freeware if you agree to let it have a large advertising banner (468x60) displayed in your browser window. This sounds like a big section of browser window you are giving them, but given the compactness of the buttons for Opera, in actual fact you are merely exchange "dead space" that would be the home of buttons in other browsers. Previous versions of Opera had been free for a trial period, but then required... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: some useful features, a real alternative to IE and Netscape
Disadvantages: some pages do not load properly

...After using both Netscape 4.6 and IE 6 I pretty much gave up, as both were hated by my computer, especially when it came to Java. After a bit of research, I decided to try Opera. Opera is a real alternative to these two giants and it works a lot better on my computer and has a few good features, like a counter, the option to restart the browser where one left it when the connection broke/computer restarted etc, and also having the windows opening inside the browser rather than down in the tool bar space. It also has the facility to call in mail from pop servers, so I don't have to use Outlook Express. It also has a messaging service and a direct link to Opera mail, which is convenient and makes this browser extremely useful. There are however a lot of drawbacks. I cannot get the Help section to work. Some pages do not load properly... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: fast and easy
Disadvantages: none i have experienced

...Opera 6 is fast. That's all there's to it. I have been familiar with the opera browsers for a long time and that is the main reason I have been using Opera for the past few years. I still use internet explorer as my default browser since some web pages specifically require internet explorer, but aside from that I use opera. If you are used to internet explorer or netscape navigator the layout might be a bit disorientating at first but give it ten or twenty minutes and you will be surfing like a seasoned pro. Bookmarking is quite similar to IE and the preferences are divided into a quick preferences sub menu and the full preferences option. you can access either one depending on what aspect you wish to change. It's really just a laziness factor. probably the best thing about opera 6 is the way it downloads files. It acts like... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Faster,Friendly,Free
Disadvantages: None in particular

...It is well known to us that there are only 3 giant browsers today competing for the crown. Quite possibly,Firefox takes everything when it comes to security issue specially from Microsoft's Internet Explorer besides Firefox is an open source which gives it an advantage but there's a lot more a browser needs to have apart from being secured and open source.Ofcourse Open source matters but vulnerability and open source's not only the aspect one should be relying on. Opera is far more customizable browser available today,It is also far more friendly,faster.It enhances browsing experience in many ways. for an example,of all browsers,it is the least bugged! My experiences howl Opera has many advantage over IE and Firefox. For an average user,Opera serves well with it slicky clean look it's also eye-candy.It is the fastest browser i found... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Small, very very fast, innovative email client.
Disadvantages: Costs money to get rid of banner-ad.

...With Internet Explorer and Opera side-by-side, measuring them purely on their browsing ability Opera wins hands down. I used Opera 3 a few years back and was impressed, but back then the number of pages it couldn't render well was significantly more than it is now so it wasn't really practical as a primary browser. A month or so ago I bought Opera 7.11 cross platform for both Windows and Linux. As an application, Opera starts up very quickly on both Windows and Linux. All the online Help is HTML based and very easy to use. Each webpage opens up in a new "tab", as oppossed to a new window, which helps keep opera very fast. There are a myriad of shortcuts to make