“Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.”
a very good move 
than for the info ;D
Thanks darkparrot
I have now updated to Version 8.5
Cheers
That’s really good news guys!!! ;D
Yes another option to avoid IE without the pesky ads or having to pay.
Although The point quoted by Crofty from the Opera web site “Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.” This doesn’t explain how the free version without the financial support of the ads can be sustained.
Unless that tremendous worldwide support is all those who paid for it (suckers) is now supporting the free rollers ;D
I’m using Opera since they give away registation keys on their birthday party. Actually I like it a lot, and I believe (basing on the security reports) it’s even safer then Firefox. I also enabled the blocking of “referrers” in Opera and it didn’t give me any problems visiting websites yet.
I rather suspect that Firefox was doing so well that Opera had no real choice other than to offer their’s for free too…
I don’t see blocking referrers (what site you were at last) as being that useful, but blocking your IP address would be more useful security tool, this however is more likely to have an effect on your browsing. Unless you are visiting sites you would rather not disclose to the next site you visit (if they even monitor it), referrers is very small beer and no way I would switch browsers just for this.
This to me is much closer than the blurb they put on their web site “Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.” Opera is barely on the radar screen in terms of browser stats, so they do need some ‘growth’.
Well since Opera has/had identified itself as IE the statistics are much lower then actual users.
Either way opera is now the default browser on my machine.
Yes David, you’re absolutely right. But I’m happy about this good news. I really like Opera and use it from version 6 until now. Never paid for it, also use the mail-client for an extra, not that important account.
I hope more people will give it a try now.
Bye,
Fast
The same sort of reason finally forced AOL to make Netscape free since IE was taking over and it had always been free. 
The same could be said of firefox as it too can report itself as IE or opera for that matter I believe?
But any way it has to be more secure than IE.
cool, is it similar to ie?? but safe like firefox??
lol… cheers bob
Opera is the best browser going - period…
Hi ye all,
This is good news. I have used Opera in the past. I may reconsider it. Now I use FF and tweaked it quite a bit security wise, and with various plug-ins. The best news here is the Dr. Web browser pre-scan plug-in is there for OPERA too.
Opera is the favourite browser of the big search specialist F.RAVIA. Go to http://www.searchlores.org , and read all what he has on Opera. It is a lot of good information. If you are not only interested in Anti Malware but in searching expertise as well, you cannot miss his site.
greets,
polonus
Yes Ricky, it takes a little getting used to as it’s not quite as IE-like as Firefox but once you’re familiar, you’ll probably never use IE again. Opera’s fast and has some good features/tools and now our friend polonus has explained that I can use Dr Web there too I can see Firefox will get even less use. Of course, like all things, it’s a matter of personal preference.
I’ve been using Opera since IE caused me real grief - nasty spyware - so much grief, the shop gave up on my PC and it was the experts here who helped me get it going again. I then switched from Norton to avast! (best move I ever made) from Zone Alarm to Kerio, and use IE only for MS updates. Since I started using Opera I have had NO spyware. NONE! I run all the scanners weekly, but there’s nothing to find. Mind you, I’m a safe surfer and just don’t go to “those places”.
Thank you all for the links and info! Cool that there’s always something new to learn!
Happy days to all