With Opera now being (banner-)free (I knew something was up when they started handing out free licenses a couple weeks back), I finally had to try it out. I gotta say, I like a lot of what I see…Kinda like a tranny with "her" pants on. But trannies also have p3nises and that’s what I’m afraid of 
If they opened up their API to the equivalent of Firefox extensions, they would really have a great browser. Opera seems to have many of the features of the Firefox extensions I use built into the browser i.e. mouse gestures, RSS reader (table of equivalents). Probably because of that lack of extensions, Opera renders pages about 30% faster for me in Linux (1.8Ghz machine). I’m so used to ads being blocked though, I don’t know if I can go back…I’m so torn! 
Ajaxian: Opera: Browser now Free
There are many third-party ad blockers, from the user-friendly Ad Muncher to the pure god-like power of Proxomitron. There is also a simple URL filter built-in to Opera, though you need an extension to use it and it requires a restart before kicking in:
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/BlockAdvertisements
Wow, even just the filter.ini method works pretty good. I’m loving this browser! Thanks john