I should say at the outset that I am a huge Opera fan, and I use the browser on my home computer, I am very impressed with the latest beta of Firefox 3. Each browser has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, I have found Opera (since version 9) to be a strong contender for the best all-around web browser, and 9.5 looks better still.
Opera remains one of the fastest browsers on the planet: extensive tests of Opera 9 done a couple of years ago found it to blow away all contenders in a suite of tests that measured startup time, CSS rendering, table rendering, image display, browser history, and JavaScript speed.
