I have switched to Opera.

Not 6 months ago I thought it was a dying browser on the desktop – destined only for connected devices. A healthy market in itself of course. Why? Well Firefox was beating it hands down. No one really talked about Opera – its Firefox this and Firefox that these days.

So why change now? Well I hate Firefox. OK hate is a strong word but I dislike using it. It is slow. It has always felt slow. When I open my browser I want it to feel responsive. I do not want to sit and wait for my computer to catch up with me.

Internet Explorer 6 was fast. One click and chapow! there it is ready to browse 🙂 I switched to IE 7 and suddenly it feels that little bit slower. Enough to make me search for a speed comparison.

This is what I found:

That extra 0.8s load time between IE6 and IE7 is noticeable (assuming RC1 is of similar load time). Firefox is confirmed as being slow to start.. whereas Opera runs away with it.

Anyhow time to find out if Opera cuts the mustard.

Huge thanks to Tarquin for the info, you can go here to see the results in more detail (Rendering CSS, Rendering table, script speed, multiple images and history) as well as times for other browsers.