So why is Opera so bl**dy slow?

[Gurm]

Well the problem of course is that Opera doesn't have a well-documented and thus easily hacked automatic extension installation process. IE and FireFox do.

[ZokesPro]

@Jesterzwild: I edited my post cause of what you said. But I do however find it safer than FireFox as I have yet to be infected, so I still disagree with you on that.

Well the problem of course is that Opera doesn't have a well-documented and thus easily hacked automatic extension installation process. IE and FireFox do.

If it's not easily hacked because it's not well documented then how is that a problem?

[The PIT]

Opera's alright for testing websites for those 0.000000008% of users.

[az]

Hmmm...my buddy did dislike Opera until he began browsing pr0n exclusively under IE/Virtual PC...

See? Opera is the most (re-) productive Browser

[Nowhere]

http://operawiki.info/OperaPerformance

Perhaps this could help some of you...

[Fat Tone]

Good Lord!

I don't have to do any of that with IE!

[az]

I didn't do any of it with Opera, either. Is it really slow for ALL the pages you visit?

[Fat Tone]

Well I've now tried 8.54 and 9.01 and 9.02, and results are simillar. 8.54 and 9.02 are now installed, in separate folders. When the first page loads you can't do anything (even scrolling) for several seconds.

My JS now works on 8.54 btw, but is slow on both versions. Alert boxes that appear instantly on IE take ~2+ seconds to appear. Clicking on radio buttons is mega slow, perhaps partly because of the animation. Turning off 'special features' or whatever it is called doesn't help.

System: A64 3400, 1GB PC3200, X800XT, XP Pro.

Anyway, no biggie. I'll just stick to IE, as ever.

[az]

Very very strange. Maybe there's a problem with your antivirus, I really can't think of anything else. As I said, for me it's a lot faster than IE, in everything except startup (because IE is preloaded by windows and because my Opera contains thousands of mails).

[Gurm]

I used to see that on some sites with Opera, I assumed it was an Opera problem. But then the same problem expanded to IE when I installed IE7! Firefox does it too on some sites. I think it has to do with something on the page forcing the entire Java VM into RAM at all times.

[az]

There are some sites that do this to Opera. I think ebay.de does when I have ten or twenty tabs of it open - still not as bad as what Tony posted. Very rarely I have the problem (I suspect it having to do something with Flash) that Opera will hang for a minute (!) or so, but once I manage to close the offending site, everything goes back to normal again.

[Nowhere]

Hmmm...perhaps I'm OK because I've turned off Java and plugins in Opera

[The PIT]

I would blame the virus checker. Certainly mcafee has problems and slows to a crawl as does Sophos and possibly Nortons. I find Nod32 okay in this respect.

[az]

I have everything turned on in Opera, so that can't be it. I'm not running any on-access virus checker, though.

[Jessterw]

I would make the comment that Opera runs like molasses on my iBook, but then it's never been a very fast browser under OS X.

Seems to run ok on the Windows box, but nothing to be impressed with.