I just checked out the latest build, Opera 5, which was released Friday, December 8, 2000. I find that most gripes have been addressed. The browser is now free. It handles ActiveX and Java. Yet, it still has a hopelessly dated bunch of plug-ins.
Opera is free because it displays ads.
If you hate this blatant advertising, you can register your copy. I first downloaded the Lite version, but found that sites with even the tiniest hint of Java had big white spaces. For a change, the JRE seems to be behaving itself. These I attribute to a historic antipathy Microsoft products have with Sun's Java implementations and vice-versa. However, the Opera 5 Lite version had no such glitches.