I'm not going to get over exited yet. But Opera 12 is now being fed an older version of Google's home page (like I care), howerver that will be the tip of the iceberg, don't get me wrong its nothing like as bad as trying to use internet explorer. I thought Sod it, I'll give new Opera a try, hell I hated version 15, but who knows, maybe they've fixed it.

I tried to hate it but it is noticeably quick. I've read years of incredibly dull browser comparisons, none of which make any noticeable difference in real life. Except of course internet explorer where it takes for ever to open, you start trying and address, then half way though it deletes your typing and takes you to MSN or asks a dozen fatuous question, and deletes the url you were typing again when your tying to get the hell away from MSN. F***k off M$ I don't want to go to MSN EVER, I'd rather read the daily f******* mail!

Ok so main stumbling block with New opera was old opera - it was properly good. Its main features of my liking were speed dial, password handling, and sync. Sync is the killer the holy grail the must have. It works! I have opera 12 open, one tried to see if the link to sync was open, but the clever little bugger managed to keep me singed in to facebook, neat! I'm impressed. Don't get me wrong the stinky password storage of other browsers has replaced the old yellow box I am used to - but it works. Oh just thought, does it do auto cookie delete on exit. I killed that, looking...

Oh yes "Keep local data only until I quit my browser" I'll have that. I'm going to assume that "local data" means HTML 5 storage as well as cookies. If any Luddite has got this far, you can't turn off cookies, cos that breaks too much, if you have them on then you have zero privacy, I can't do anything about the former, but I hate the latter, this way my cookies and HTML cream only stay for a few days at most,and are deleted. yay!

Ok so my Addons (Ghostery and Add Block Plus) just installed them selves, now I'm genuinely impressed. Well done Opera, give your selves a Coconut!

Ok so come tomorrow I'll click the link for opera 12, for a few months longer, cos well F4 and the sidebar are gone, for good I expect, and Opera 12's not dead quite yet, but when I do have to move It won't hurt so much, I can live with it. I've used Opera for as long as I've had broadband, yeah I remember Lynx*, and mosaic and I can remember Netscape Navigator on Solaris (I think it was Solaris) even Gopher. But looks like I won't have to file Opera with them as history for a few years more at least.

Give it a try: http://www.opera.com

 * Ok I admit I will on occasion still use lynx if I cant get links...