Opera 9.0 Review - The fat lady breaks a leg.

Opera has always been the quiet rebel. While other browsers have been full of security bugs, and sometimes slow and bloated, Opera has been fast, secure and stable.

Unfortunately, not so with version 9.0. This really should have made it out as a beta release, as it is such a complete and utter disaster. Long term Opera users the world over, who have downloaded and attempted to upgrade to this 'new improved' version, have found their browser settings vanish into thin air. In some cases it is possible to recover some or all of these, and of course users should always have backups if they're sensible. The trouble is, none of this ever happened with previous releases of Opera, and even with backups, the time lost uninstalling, reverting back to the previous version, and restoring settings are a major issue.

Opera has lost serious credibility creating a product that penalises loyal users so badly  for upgrading to the latest version. Apparently new users who have installed clean have not suffered problems, but this is not the point. Opera has a tiny share of the global browser market, and depends on word of mouth from fans to promote it. If Opera can't look after it's existing users, then it is doomed.

I had hoped to bring a review of the great new features in Opera, but I've been too busy trying to fix the disaster that upgrading has created, and in the end decided to revert back to version 8.54.

Apparently Opera decided to launch the latest version in Seattle. It seems they have learned from the giant in that neighbourhood how to create buggy software.

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