Opera 9.5 Final Review

Opera Software seems to have successfully pipped Mozilla Foundation to the launch of their latest browse by a good 4 days. The final version of my favourite browser is finally out and I am feeling very smug about it. The worlds fastest browser, apparently, has gotten even faster. While no one seems to be paying attention to ‘the other browser ‘, we shall take a look at its latest features.

If you aren’t using Opera, I suggest you Download Opera 9.5. I’ll tell you why you need to.

Full text search

Every word of every page you ever visited is now indexed in Opera’s database. Its one step ahead of FireFox 3’s title and URL search. Which means that even if you can recall one word from that web page, Opera will dutifully lead you to it. Which means, even if you have the brains of Paris Hilton, forgetting a web page should be a dead and buried exercise.

Revamped interface

As you can see from the screen shot, the navigation buttons seem to have gone to the beauty parlour and so have the tabs. To open a new tab, there is a big triangle button to the right. I do keep confusing it with being on the left, but that wont take to long to used to, I guess. But that’s a very welcome change nevertheless. And of course, the looks are infinitely customizable by way of skins and widgets.

All throughout the betas and release candidates, Opera did not add the new interface. But when I installed the final version, I was in for a pleasant surprise. Opera 9.5 features a very glossy and modern looking interface to go with your OS.

You can also include the status bar to show inside the address bar itself. Which saves space and leaves you with a trifle more area to work in.

Improved Performance and Security

There are tonnes of performance and security improvements throughout and the performance part of it is instantly visible. Opera 9.5 is a lot more stable and starts fairly quick. Pages which are loaded with scripts are that much more faster. Sites like Digg are where you can see these performance enhancements. They may be small but they are significant. You can see the Opera 9.5 changelog and see for yoursef what exactly has been changed.

As for the scripts and CSS test, we’ll do them when Mozilla FireFox 3 is launched tomorrow. Simply because I don’t see the point of putting some numbers if they don’t offer any perspectives for you (BTW, you can help Mozilla create a world record of sorts by pledging to download FireFox3 tomorrow).

My gripes

• I’ve always wanted proper rich-text support, so that I can select even images for copy/pasting. That is one luxury we take for granted in FF and IE.
• Someone improve the performance of the BitTorrent client in Opera. It is slow enough to the point of being unusable.
• I’d like to have the “See selection source” in Opera. Its can be really nifty at times.

Conclusion: If you want a light, fast yet feature rich browser, Opera 9.5 is an excellent choice. There may be a few issues but I guess they can be overlooked.

SatishSays dot Com Rating

7.5/10

Apple Macbook Air review

I am pretty darn sure that Apple’s marketing guys are the best in the whole world. It takes that much more effort to disguise the flaws in a product and have the unsuspecting masses believe it to be an enhancement. Bravo, bellisima and all that exclamatory nonsense, Apple.

Given a pile of dung, they would successfully add shadows, use a cool blue font, call it iDung and guffaw all the way to the bank. That is what I think of Apple’s latest tomfoolery, the MacBook Air. It’s not that bad as the above lines make it to be, but there’s very less going for it, in any case.

Looks and build

There is little to be said when it comes to Apple’s design and the MacBook Air is eye-candy enough. The design is as clean as clean can be. From the front, all you see are the track pad, keyboard and display. No shiny stickers exemplifying the innards of the machine. I personally think that’s a good move. I mean it’s a bit like “12 foot long intestine, Duo” or “7 inch you-know-what, GTX” stickers slapped on to your forehead. Even the ports are tucked away smartly behind small sliders and you wouldn’t really notice them, unless you know or are told (there aren’t too many of them).

The whole package is so slim that you find it difficult to believe that there is a processor and a hard drive, spinning away inside. It really is a bit unbelievable at first and it’ll take time to getting used to the mass, or the lack of it, rather. It’s not unlike Mrs. Beckham’s size zero frame, but it’s a lot more beautiful. LOT more, actually (enough actually, I know my readers would choose a Mac Book Air over a silly, anorexic mother-of-2, any day).

The competitors for the Mac Book Air, weight wise, should be the Sony Vaio TZ series, the Fujitsu Lifebook Q series or the Lenovo X300. (All of them have smaller screens, but all of them are endowed with an optical drive)

Input and Output

The keys on the MBA keyboard are well spaced out and shouldn’t induce fatigue even after using it for long hours, (provided the battery has enough juice). It has a backlight which adjusts its brightness in accordance to a sensor. But above all this is the brilliant track pad which has multi-touch. Which means all your pinching and rotating actions will work on photos and web pages in Safari.
There, everything nice about the MacBook Air is over. Now for some fun.

Connectivity

“Just not enough” is exactly how I’d sum it up in a line. It does support 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1, though. The blazing fast speeds provided by the 802.11n wireless protocol are supposed to be the excuse given by Apple for not having an optical drive. Yeah, right, keep your marketing gimmickry to yourself, Apple. And I don’t particularly like the idea of optical-drive socializing unless it’s a really hot chick, so there.

“Hey Cutie Pie,
Your optical drive, May I?”

(This might earn you a kick in the nuts. Said hot chick might be expecting a better pickup line)

On the wired side, we have only 2 USB ports, no FireWire, one audio out and that’s all. I just don’t get how Apple relies solely on the existence of a fast wireless system to compensate for an optical drive. What if the person around you also has a MacBook Air? It’ll be fun watching your faces when you want to re-install your OS or new software.

Apple does offer a SuperDrive, which essentially is an external optical drive which plugs into your USB port. This means, you’ll have to disconnect your mouse or whatever is connected to your solitary USB port. Have fun with your single USB port, douche bag. There is also a Time Capsule which promises to wirelessly backup your data.

But this entire drama means the MacBook Air always needs something or the other to complete itself. This is not really unlike a crippled person who will always need their crutches or wheelchair to move around.

Performance

This is where the MacBook Air takes a big beating. Everything has been compromised to find that Zen-like slim form factor. That silly 80GB 4200RPM hard disk lifted from the iPod is hardly any good. It doesn’t show its weaknesses when it is new, but fill it up and it’ll gradually start showing its true colours.

I believe, this laptop has been manufactured for frequent travelers who would want to access their data at a more hurried pace and they sure wouldn’t be happy with its performance. Apple does offer a solid state drive, but that will push up costs even further. There are a load of other laptop manufacturers who’ll offer you a SSD and optical drive at the price of a base MacBook Air with a standard hard drive. But then, this is Apple we are talking about and they will somehow make you feel very smug about it.

Battery

Battery performance, too, is not up to mark and is way lower than what Apple claims and sure enough it runs only 3 hrs under normal usage. You might just get a little bit more if you scrimp on your usage, but you haven’t got an Air to scrimp when you’ve spent a bomb.

The Good
• Slim form factor
• Well spaced out keyboard
• Large multi-touch track pad

The Bad
• No optical drive
• Slow hard drive
• Poor battery

Conclusion

Even an eternal optimist would agree. There is just no way the Apple Macbook Air can be your primary laptop and when you are shelling out this much money, you’d expect a lot more. Call me a class-less, panache-less and a frustrated teen, but money doesn’t grow on trees either.
However, this might be a great thing to show off at a conference or presentation. Now, there.

SatishSays dot Com rating

5/10

Beta Browser Wars: IE8 vs Firefox 3 vs Opera 9.5

One of the most debatable topics on the net is up for debate, yet again. Yes, we are talking browsers, the pieces of software that are everybody’s gateway to the mystical world of The Web. And which run into long pages of rants on various forums online.

All the 3 major browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Foundations Firefox and Opera Software’s Opera are going through an upgrade cycle. The beta versions are out and today we shall see what to expect from them.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

I would be lying if I were to say that I wasn’t surprised at such an early upgrade. I mean, IE6 was around for donkey’s years before the boffins at MS decided that it was time for IE7. Appearance wise, there is little that has changed, but the way pages are handled have. IE finally looks to be following all the web standards quite competently. But all this doesn’t really seem to increase performance at all. It still seems fairly sluggish, but then this is an early Beta and IE 8 gets the benefit of doubt from me.

With that safely tucked away, we have some cool new features like Activities (select text, and it’ll give you options to do something with it. Like search on a map or on any search engine) and WebSlices (MS speak for a spruced up version of RSS feeds. Only eBay and Facebook support this, as of now), an improved phishing filter and auto crash recovery. Oh boy, IE needs this one. All said and done, IE 8 is a step in the right direction.

IE8 Beta 1 Changelog

Download IE8

Mozilla FireFox 3 Beta 5

This is the browser that gave Microsoft the heebie-jeebies and for good reason. It was small, fast, infinitely customizable and best of all, it was open source. And given the Mozilla Foundations marketing muscle, the browser spread like wildfire and replaced the shoddy IE 6 on many a computer.

In the latest Beta, Mozilla seems to have addressed tons of performance issues and it does seem faster than the older one. They have also added a load of personal features which allows you to organize your favorites better. The address bar also allows you to search page titles, in case you forgot the name of ‘that’ website which sold salted peanuts.

My only gripe is that it takes a relatively long time to start up. I hope this will be fixed in the final version.

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5 Changelog

Download Firefox 3 Beta 5

Opera 9.5 Beta 2

I have been an Opera fan boy for as far as I can remember and have been using it since version 6. It’s always been ahead of its times and was the first browser to offer tabbed browsing. It also offers a mail client, bit torrent support, mouse gestures, widgets, themes apart from offering the old lady to cross the road, even if she doesn’t want to. Its claim to fame however was of being “The world’s fastest Internet browser”, which was a conclusion reached by many a tech magazine and website.

In the latest version, Opera offers better a completely search-able database of all your goddamned visited pages. Yes, even the content is indexed which is accessible from the address bar. There is little that it did not have in the first place, to be improved in the newer version. Though, there are lots of performance enhancements to keep you happy.

Opera 9.5 Beta 2 Changelog

Download Opera 9.5 Beta 2

I would have loved to do some performance testing, but since only Firefox is in the final stages of the Beta, it will, quite obviously, ace all tests. IE seems to lagging far behind in the script test, a bit too much for comfort, actually. So, we shall wait till the final versions of all the 3 browsers are released and we shall have a bigger Web 2.0 battle.

Till then, happy surfing.

Tags: browser, internet