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Until now. I know what you are thinking, and it probably goes
something like, "Paul, say it ain't so! You were always such a rock
and roll expert! And now you expect us to believe you are sittin' around
in your Laz-E-Boy listenin' to Leotyne Price?" Well, you're right,
I am not listening to Ms. Price, but I have mellowed in my old age. I
have started listening to Country music a little more even though I
swore it would never happen. As far as opera (the singing kind) goes, I
still swear that will never happen although I can't say I haven't tried.
Ever once in a while, I turn on public radio and try to listen to the
Texaco sponsored Opera show, but not once in all these years have I ever
been able to listen for more than five minutes. I guess some things
aren't meant to be. I may look a little like Pavarotti, but judging from
my dog's response to my singing in the shower, I sure don't sound like
him.
However, the singing kind of Opera is not the one I'm talking about
today. This is the internet surfing kind of Opera. It seems that mighty
Microsoft finally has a strong competitor for their extremely popular
Internet Explorer. It is called Opera and can be downloaded from www.opera.com.
It is a fairly large download (about 11Mb) so if you are connecting with
a 56K modem start it and go to bed or something. Once the file is
downloaded, open the file to start the installation procedure. You can
install Opera without conflicting with Microsoft Internet Explorer or
Netscape Navigator. Take all of the defaults initially, you can set the
preferences later.
I have now been using Opera for about a month and I must say I am
extremely pleased with it. Over that time, I have continued to tweak the
preferences until now I have it set up just like I like it and it works
great. It is without a doubt the faster internet surfing software and is
the most stable one I have ever used. It hasn't locked up my computer
once in the last 30 days. It links directly to my Outlook e-mail so I
haven't had to change that and even now from time to time, I go back
into Internet Explorer.
I can't say that Opera will be perfect for you. But I can encourage
you to download the program and take a look at it, or at least check out
the features that come with it. I think you might just find something
you like. While I can't list all of the things I like about it right
here, I will leave you with one thing it does that I like immensely.
Opera allows me to type in the letter 'g' and a word in the address
box and it will automatically go to my favorite search engine Google
and look up that word without making me click my favorites to go to
search engine manually. This feature works with all major search engines
and has saved me a huge amount of time already.
There are a bunch of other things I really like, but I don't have the
time today to list all of them. Maybe later I'll come back update this
article with those items, but regardless, I thought it was worth your
time, so go take a look!
Paul H. Tarver |
