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Which Internet browser do you use? Internet Explorer? Firefox? How about Chrome or Safari? Come on out, I know there’re some of you who choose the path less trodden. How about Opera then? I guessed as much, not that many. Opera users are a little over one per cent of worldwide browser users. A real pity given that this browser pretty much pioneered features like the tabbed interface, pop-up blocking, BitTorrent support among others, and is available on more platforms than any other browser — Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2, and BeOS! The latest version (10.10) of the browser is pretty amazing at what it can do, and here are some reasons why you may be tempted to give it a try.

Take the Opera Turbo feature for instance. Turbo is a server side compression and optimisation utility for low bandwidth connections. Put simply, it takes the webpage you’ve requested and passes it through Opera’s servers first, where the page gets compressed and optimised, and sent back to you.

Sure, it does have its side effects — like noticeable image degradation — but it speeds up page load times on slow connections, such as open WiFi hotspots, dial-up connections, or when you use your mobile phone tethered with your laptop. Perfect too for when you need to quickly look something up, and the Internet connection is acting cranky!

And if your work keeps you across several machines across the day, Opera’s Link feature lets you synchronise your bookmarks, custom searches, history, and notes across authorised machines and mobile devices. You even get a built-in e-mail client that supports regular POP accounts in addition to IMAP and popular webmail services like Yahoo and Gmail.

Couple that with the download manager which now features pause and resume buttons and a built-in support for the BitTorrent protocol, and you suddenly have the capabilities of three separate applications within your browser! Sounds about right for someone who wants to keep their netbooks light, doesn’t it?

But by far the most interesting (and unique feature) in Opera 10.10 is Unite. It seems simple enough on paper, but it’s something that hasn’t been done in such an elegant and user-friendly manner before this, and certainly not by an Internet browser!

What it manages is a personal file-sharing system on your desktop computer, which allows you to share content on your machine with others, over the Internet, in a simple way — without actually uploading files anywhere.

And it’s free — all you have to do is to head over to the My Opera website and get yourself an account with Opera. Once done, open Opera 10.10 on your PC/Mac and enter your user details under the Unite settings, as well as a name for each computer on which you wish to run Unite. Each machine you set unite up on will then be available via the address http://machinename.yourusername.operaunite.com and best of all, you can access this from any machine/browser, even if it is not running Opera.

If I see eyebrows rise on account of security and privacy, Unite handles that by only exposing limited folders on your PC, and you can even set passwords and bandwidth limits for the Unite service. But don’t limit yourself to only sharing files — the in-built applications let you turn your PC into a streaming music server for you to access your music library from anywhere on the Internet, or share photos without uploading them to Flickr or a similar service.

There’s the cute Fridge service, which lets your friends leave virtual sticky notes on your virtual fridge for you to read later! If you’re adventurous and want to leave your machine on for extended periods, Unite even lets you set up a web server on your machine, and you can dish out temporary (or permanent) websites right from your desktop. No domain name registration or static IP addresses required — just watch out for your bandwidth usage!

You can set passwords for access as well and hide the contents of your Unite services from web search (it’s done by default)! Of course, do remember that Opera needs to be running for Unite to work — shut it down and all your friends see is an error screen when they try to connect to your PC. As time goes by, more services are being developed to integrate with Unite, so in theory, this system has no limits!

These are just some of the reasons to give Opera a solid try, but do remember that it is one of the least-supported browsers out there, so a lot of websites, banking ones in particular, might throw back errors about not supporting your browser. Then again, I face that with Firefox as well, so keep an updated version of Internet Explorer handy, as always!

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