Lifehacker had this article comparing speed of the major browsers newest versions. Interesting. Even with no extensions installed Firefox3 finished last in most categories. With extensions it probably would have got it's ass kicked all over cyberspace. I personally have not really seen a speed increase in FF3 compared to FF2. Not like the huge jump I have seen in Opera 9.5 compared to Opera 9.27. Remember Lifehacker is a big FF loving site so there is no biased against FF there. Safari and Opera were the winners followed by IE and than FireFox.

http://lifehacker.com/396048/speed-testing...st-web-browsers

Wow. I found this site just in time, eh? Wasn't long before I got hooked on Opera when FF3x was running into snags all Spring. That's a major blow to FF. Meh, too many fanboys on FF anyway. Time to leave.

Well, not right away. I still want to try it out next week.

I will always have FF installed because it is a great browser. It's just not my favorite. I am really liking Maxthon 2 also.

As most know I've been running Opera for the last week or so, V 9.27 because of the bugginess of 9.5. And I tried the final release of 9.5, and had the same problems.

Regardless of what all these browser tests state, (and MHO is they're a crock of s**t anyway, as we all have our systems set up differently, with our chosen AV's, and our preferred Firewalls, all with a combination of preferred settings), I find Firefox simply leaves Opera standing, whether I'm using this forum or generally surfing.

I'm not getting into a browser speed debate here, because as I say above, it's all subjective. This is just my personal experience with Firefox and Opera. Needless to say, I'm back with Firefox.

Dennis I didn't find Opera 9.27 to be very fast. It's feature rich and smooth but I never considered it fast. It wasn't until I put in Opera 9.5 Beta 2 that I really fully switched to Opera. It is incredibly fast for me plus has all the features and more that 9.27 has. So I'm not surprised you don't find 9.27 faster than FF.

I don't believe for a moment that all the folk finding Opera faster are imagining it, but it's never worked for me.

Even with the extensions I have, pages just leap into Firefox, and fingers crossed, I hope it stays that way.

I never tried Opera 9.27. (Remember, it was Opera 6 or 7 when I last tried it.) O 9.52 beta works fine for me. 9.5 final....I heard it's good, and looks like it was beaten with the ugly stick. I'd like to get 9.5 set up the same skin and functions I have currently running. Now I know you guys are all "clean install" happy, but can I install 9.5 final over my current 9.52 beta and still have the same skin, config and bookmarks intact?

Opera 9.5 final installs in a separate directory from the beta. It actually installs were 9.27 is if you have it installed. Opera is probably the easiest browser to transfer your settings to a clean install. Took me about 2 min. Everything you will need will be in your profile. Just install 9.5 final and transfer your info over to it from 9.5 beta 2. You can uninstall Beta 2 if you want to.

Here is a very easy tutorial on what and how to transfer settings. Explains what files and folders and where they are.

http://my.opera.com/neeraj_deshmukh/blog/show.dml/6579

I thought I replied to your post already. Glad I double-checked.

Thanks Anthony. I just downloaded O 9.5. I have my old profile back-up hanging out waiting for me to transfer the important stuff. Hey, I don't think the new O skin is ugly. I think it looks fairly nice. Certainly not the set-up I want, but black is nice. Still, I want my gray minimal skin. It's a clean skin. (I'll never get rid of that euphemism now. )

I bookmarked that link you posted & looked through it. That'll come in very handy.

----

Alright, I transferred everything from my Opera 9.5 beta profile to my 9.5 final profile and have the exact same set-up. Everything's there. Sweet!

Yes it is very nice being able to do that. Now keep a back up of your profile some where safe and back it up regularly. I would freak if I had to start from scratch. I have HEAVILY tweaked Opera and it would take me for ever to set it up from scratch.

I've wanted to use Opera for a while, but it lacked things I used actively in Firefox. I admittedly like Fx3, it'll be great!

Good thing is most browsers don't seem to conflict with each oither. If you haven't tried Opera in about a year they've definitely made changes, it's worth a look. If you don't like it uninstall it. I have both FF2 & Opera 9.5. I prefer Opera because I can tweak it more. And it's mui fast.

The thing with Opera is that it's not a browser for beginners or lazy people. It requires much configuration to get it where I want it. FireFox is stupid simple. It's default install is about as basic as a browser can be. Than you find an extension and click "install". Not much to it really. Opera and Maxthon 2 come with so much more than FireFox you need to spend some time to learn them. You are not going to do that if you just want to get to your porn sites in a hurry. So you use the POS that comes with Windows (IE) or you jump on the band wagon and use Firefox because you hear it's the "cool" browser.

Oh, but I wanted porn now.

Hmmm, now I'm tempted about Maxthon 2.

Maxthon 2 I like very much.

Not saying the design is bad, but it looks a lot like WMP 11.

That's because I am using the WMP 11 skin

This is the default skin. There are many to chose from. You can get them from the Maxthon addon site.

Oh, okay. I was just wondering. I'll give Maxthon a lookee.

IE8 uses a new build of Trident that has many optmisations in it.

The nuclear submarine or the sugar-free gum?

You're the first person I've seen mention that they use Maxthon. I've been using Maxthon 1 on my older Windows 2000 machine for quite a while and really like it a lot. For some reason, the IE engine is a LOT faster on lower powered machines, but since IE 6 is the latest version I can run on Win2k, I'm stuck without tabbed browsing and other modern features. That's where Maxthon comes in. It's basically FF/Opera but with the faster IE rendering engine. I still run Opera on my XP machine, but Maxthon is a lifesaver on the older PC's!

Obviously neither. Trident is the MS HTML layout engine.

I also have Maxthon 1 installed along with Maxthon 2.

How does the resource/memory usage of Maxthon 2 compare to 1? Much higher?

A little bit but not much more for me. There are people on the forums complaining that it uses a lot of RAM though.