We've known all along that Internet Explorer is a monumentally bloated piece of software. Recently though, after reading some posts by Al here in the PC911 Forum touting Opera's speed, I decided to give this alternative browser a try. Opera's advantage is that it is fast, very fast, much faster than either IE or Netscape. What's more, with version 4 of their browser, Opera have improved their interface and made the browser significantly more reliable than previous versions as well. I was so impressed that I bought it, and for a freeware junkie that's saying something.
Opera still has some problems though.
It can be difficult to get it to do certain things reliably like retain information that's kept in cookie files and its preferences settings are quirky. Worst of all though, it gains much of its speed by caching web pages you've already been to and relentlessly presenting you with these old pages when you click a link to a regularly visited location. This can be a mammoth pain when browsing sites like a forum where pages are changing virtually from one minute to the next. You must reload every time in order to get the current version of the forum pages to appear. Even so, Opera is so fast and light on its feet that it is sometimes worth it to put up with the hassle.