The browser, that is. I'm still unsure about the music.
My Firefox kept crashing, and it took so long to open in the morning, then to load the pages, I was getting frustrated with it. I uninstalled it, uninstalled all my addons, and tried it again, but that still didn't fix it.
So I tried out Safari, Chrome, and Opera.
Chrome is too stripped down for me. It has too few features. And the irony is, I couldn't install my Google toolbar on it.
Safari for Windows is also too stripped down. It may be good for a Mac.
Then I tried Opera. It does have add ons, but they load as their own applications. But the cool thing I'm liking about Opera is that I don't need as many addons. Spell check is built in. Copying text as plain text is the default. Most ads are already blocked (I do see a couple from time to time, but not enough to be worth doing anything about.
And boy, is it fast! It loads the content of the page before pictures and CSS, so you can start browsing the content before it looks pretty. I love the way it handles pop up windows: It adds new tabs, but new windows are also added as a tab, but show up on top of the content like a window. Instead of a Downloads window, it gets it's own tab, so it's not in the way.
Autofill is built in. So I can type things like my name, address, and website into the autofill, then when I'm filling in something, it offers those as options when I'm typing. One thing I like is that it offers only those, where Firefox seems to offer anything I've ever typed into a form field. It's not something that everyone will like, but I can type faster than I can select something in a drop down list, so I love that all those choices that I'd never use aren't there.
Surprisingly, I haven't come upon a website that isn't compatible with Opera yet. No weird funky layouts like I sometimes see in Explorer, and no "click on the plain html version because this dynamic version isn't compatible with your browser" type messages.
I only found one thing so far about Opera that I don't like, that Google Toolbar I mentioned. The only Google Toolbar I could find that works with opera is a widget, which like I said above, runs as it's own application. So in the morning, I have to open Opera and the Google Toolbar separately. Also, unless I set it as Always On Top, the Google Toolbar is covered by my browser window. I set it to Always On Top, and now it's always there, no matter what program I'm in. But I put it down in the corner of my screen, so usually I don't even notice it.
I just thought I'd share, because I know there's at least a couple people here that might be interested in my thoughts on another browser. It's not for everyone, but I think that if you like it, you'll love it.
I think I've tried Opera four times over the years. I remember one time sticking with it quite awhile before eventually FireFox seemed like a better option after some upgrades.
I'll have to check it out again, see what all has changed.
I downloaded it again a couple days ago when we were Twittering about it.
I've gotten used to using iGoogle the last couple months. For some reason, my iGoogle page never fully loads on Opera. The spinning wheel never stops spinning, and the Google finance window never loads content.
Another problem I found in iGoogle is the RSS reader window. If I click on an item, it pops up a small reader window (like it's supposed to), but I can't close that popup window. It looks funky and there is no "X" to close it.
I did see some things I like about it that you mentioned, but I would have to get away from iGoogle to use it as my main browser. I'm not in love with iGoogle, but my phone will sync with Google calendar so I'm using Google Calendar as my calendar/schedule now, and since I'm already there for that, its nice that I can have all the extra stuff there as well.
That sucks Web, because I don't have any of those problems. On a lark, I added Google Finance to my iGoogle page, and it loaded fast and fine. And my Google Reader items do pop up in the window like they're supposed to, they look exactly the same as in FF, and I close the X and they're gone. Maybe there's something on your computer that's not compatible with Opera.
Unfortunately, its a fact of life for what I have to do.
I'm actually kind of liking 7 though (except for the little issues). Overall, it's pretty nice.
Right now, I'm playing with NetVibes.com. Its a lot like iGoogle in that it's a all-in-one start page kind of thing. They have widgets for Google Calendar, and everything else, I can use other tools for. It seems to be working fine in Opera. I'll play with it some more.
Maybe there was a java update or something that Netvibes kicked in that iGoogle didn't prompt or something. In Firefox, I'd have times when I had to reload iGoogle because some of my widgets didn't load.
I tried Netvibes when Google switched their format, but ultimately, I'm so interconnected with Google (Gmail, Calendar, Docs...) that no other service could give me the features that I had on iGoogle, so I switched back.
I'll have to play around with it a bit more, but at first glance I definately could see using it along with FireFox.
There are some aspects of FireFox I would miss too much, but the Opera seems faster and less cluttered and might be a nice option for reading online news sites, which is something I do a lot of.
I ran Opera some more today. I do like how fast it builds pages, especially when they are coming from cache.
I think I'm missing my Firefox extensions too much to make Opera my daily browser. Actually, it's like the widgets aren't even really connected to the browser at all. It's more like they are just separate little programs offered through the Opera site.
If I was having trouble with Firefox, then I think I'd switch to Opera, but Firefox is running fine for me and I'm too used to how the extensions customize the actual browsing experience.
