30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover

1. “Awesome! I’ve always liked Opera but never thought I should have to spend money for a browser.
2. Who cares? Firefox is free and open-source and it has extensions!
3. Aw man, I (just) bought license for Opera, what a rip-off!

For the first group, look no further than http://opera.com/download/. Go get Opera for Windows, Mac, Linux (16 distros and various subflavors, plus a generic .tar.gz), FreeBSD, or Solaris.

Regarding the second: yes, that’s true. Of course Opera has seen a surge in usage even while being for-pay, which indicates to me that there are a lot of folks out there who are looking for something besides what Firefox has to offer.

To the third group: no regrets! First of all, you supported innovation in a long-standing company that has been around for a long time. So there’s that. But also, being a registered customer will still entitle you to email support (see https://support.opera.com/bin/customer/). So it certainly wasn’t a waste of money.

I could hardly believe the news when I read it. Like many people, I’ve hoped for this day for a long time. When I first used Opera (back around Opera4) they had a 30 day trial - and their 30 day trial wasn’t limited to 30 consecutive days (sorta like the 30 days series here :-) it was 30 days of usage. Well, I was hooked and registered before the trial was over, and I’ve never looked back.

Since Opera5 had a free, ad-sponsored version, the 30-day demo was eliminated. I’ve often argued for it to be brought back, because I sincerely believe that if you spend a month with Opera, you’ll be hooked like I was.

Of course a lot has changed since Opera5 days. I’m sure there are some people who have switched to Firefox and are happy with their choice. I’m sure there are some who desperately need this or that extension for some feature that isn’t available in Opera. I understand that too.

But for the vast majority of people, Opera is going to be a really compelling choice. Some of it has to do with the integration of several apps into one: email, RSS/Atom, Usenet, and IRC (unfortunately, BitTorrent, which had been available in a few betas, did not make it into Opera 8.5). Part of it is the fact that they get all that in one easy to install package rather than having to install extensions to get the features they want.

Lars Kleinschmidt has an interesting page at http://opera-fansite.de/wiki/Download+alte+Versionen which gives you the release versions of Opera back to Opera 2.

• Opera2: 3 versions (1 was a demo)
• Opera3: 9 versions
• Opera4: 3 versions
• Opera5: 6 versions
• Opera6: 7 versions (all point releases)
• Opera7: 18 versions!!!!
• Opera8: 4 versions thus far (5 if you count 8.10 with BitTorrent, which was only released on the my.opera.com forums)

(Note: I omitted some versions if they were simply differed by a build number or language supported. 7.02 Bork still rates as the funniest browser release ever.)

Wow. I mean I never realized until I looked. Opera7 was around for a really long time. Then I started to think back, and I checked, and sure enough, Opera7 was the last time you’ve had to pay for an upgrade. Opera8 was a free upgrade. People who bought Opera7 when it was first released back in January of 2003 received 2.5 years of upgrades for free, and not just a few features, but a lot of improvements.

Of course there will be some who just registered Opera. Well the great news is that many of us (myself included) have bought software only to have it dumped and never see another version. Your money wasn’t wasted, and this extremely aggressive move by Opera tells me that they plan to be around for a long, long time. And just think: if you registered Opera, you qualify for email support. Not a bad deal, all in all.

What’s next? Well, Opera 9 of course. With the exception of 3.6x, Opera hasn’t released anything higher than .5, so it seems safe to assume that this might be near the end of Opera8’s development cycle. Rumors are already starting about what will come next.

All of which is to say, I guess I need to kickstart the Opera8 Lover series before it is obsolete!

See also: Why we made it free (Opera.com) and The Official Opera is free press release .