Yeah, old news already, a while ago Opera got rid of the 39 euro fee and made available the light, ads free browser, after a deal with Google allegedly. I decided to give it a try myself, (actually it was a comment exchage with Vivi that startled me) - it certainly looks neat and moves fast, the learning curve is not too steep, though the keyboard shortcuts are slightly different than the ones from Firefox or IE.

Opera seems quite a cool company to me, I had a chance of having their marketing guy as a guest lecturer back in school and he really impressed me. For a better understanding of where they're heading at and the current strategy read Dorrian's impressions from the SD Forum where he had the chance to see a presentation from Opera's Timo Bruns.