Switching from Opera to SRWare Iron?

I am just thinking about this.

There are multiple reasons:

1- It has built-in sandbox with no slow down at all.
2- Fastest to launch as compared to IE, Opera, and FF
3- Reasonably fast browsing, seems just like Opera
4- GUI is simple ( though a bit non-professional just my feeling, seems un-finished).
5- Having less users, it must be less targeted by malware writers.
6- Seems reasonably stable.

I am trying to use it as my main browser on Windows 7. I am using the portable version. Not sure what are the main features of Opera that SRWare Iron lacks?

What do you people think?

 

I'm actually thinking of doing the opposite !

Your reasons first
1- don't know how "real" this sandbox is say compared to sandboxie , its above my knowledge level really to evaluate.
2- yes Iron is very fast to launch
3- yes no really difference compared to FF , IE8
4- GUI is simple , I like it , but has NO "extras" at all .. will explain further later
5- yeap but i'd say opera would be targeted at least as little
6- yes , although I can't scroll up and down in a window , and its a hard bug to fix , as most people can !



Why I like the look of opera

1) intergrated bookmarks synch , if use opera on work and home pc
2) very good security track record.
3) nice website & "ethos" as far as I can see.
4) skinnable - i think ??
5) has addon's I think ??


1) is really the kicker for me. don't like the way foxmarks is going at all.

my 2 cents.
i think browsers are really just personal prefence these days though

 

I'm a Firefox user primarily but I don't see any point in switching from Opera to Iron.

In terms of speed, Opera isn't too far back of Iron. In terms of features, it's not even close. Iron is still a pretty bare browser in that respect. So personally, unless you don't mind using a bare bones browser that really has nothing but speed, I don't see why anyone would go from Opera to Chrome.

 

The other issue with Iron is that its updates are far less and frequent as compared to Chrome so apart from the issues listed above, I don't see any reason to make the switch from Opera to Iron.

 

Agree that Opera has lot of features and is my main browser too, but IMO many users never use these functions in reality.

 

The majority of Chrome's updates are to its beta channel. Stable releases are planned once per quarter, I believe, and Iron's update frequency actually isn't that far off from Chrome's. The stable codebase of Iron is even based off Chrome 2.

Regarding the sandbox: it fails at one very critical aspect, and that is plugins run OUTSIDE the sandbox, meaning that things like Flash and pdf exploits still own you. There's a --safe-plugins command switch that extends sandbox functionality to plugins, but it's still experimental and tends to break some things in my experience.

As far as features go, more isn't always better. As long as a product has the ones you need, you're good to go.

 

I prefer opera because it acualy has features and is still a fast browser.
Soon enough google will add features to chrome and it will be around the same speed as opera or firefox.
opera 10 will be out later this year and will be quite alot faster than opera 9x

 

I recommend staying with Opera, but if you must go over to the likes of Chrome, I highly suggest Chromium over Iron.

Chromium will be up to day, doesn't have the google updater nor brand, and has adblock via adsweep.

The only difference is you have to manually update (easily done with chromium nightly updater), and you can change your localstate id manually (very very simple).

Iron seems to be a good effort, but not worth it IMO.

 

I think with opera you can also specify where your bookmarks folder is.

Useful for those who want to lock down a system during internet usage but have a second partion to save a bookmark file to.

 

10 alpha is indeed superfast - and opens in a second when forced into Sandboxie.

philby

 

Running Opera 10 alpha here and I agree about it's speed.

I would keep Opera for the features and the speed.

 

are you using lastest snapshot with the crash reporting bultin?

 

No crash reporting. What is the latest build that you have found?
Haven't had anything to report on to date,no bugs or glitches.

 

I have build 1219 and no crash reporting...

philby

 

I just found build 1456 and that has crash reporting built in.
It's automatic according to the site.


http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

 

Thanks for the link!

Weird, but after downloading and upgrading from the installer, my build now shows as 1413 not 1456.

Also, I don't seem to be able to get rid of the upgrade portal page opening on startup, alongside my normal startup page google) ie. I now have 2 tabs opening.

philby

 

That is weird.
I installed over the top/upgraded.
Mine shows build 1456 and my home page is still Google.

 

I upgraded to 1456 last night with no issues. Crash reporting worked well.

 

Well, FWIW, I switched to Opera from Iron on an old Dell Dimension just yesterday.

Despite the rather bleak GUI, I really liked Iron and the fact that each tab is run in a separate process is nice, at least in theory. However, after (accidentally) opening around a dozen tabs, I noticed there were ~14 "iron.exe" processes running and the grand total in TM was ~310MB. After installing Opera, I opened the same number of tabs and noted memory utilization was less than 1/3 that of Iron.

So, buh-bye Iron, hello Opera. Kind of nice to be using a fast, more fully featured, ***and attractive*** browser.

 

Hmmm... U mean Chromium is far superior than Iron? I was thinking not to even touch Chromium due to google( I assume Chromium and Google Chrome are same).

 

Fixed now - I think I had a temporary Sandboxie issue.

Incidentally, any point in keeping Turbo enabled if on fast ADSL?

I enabled it out of interest and Opera dialogued that if connection is fast, it should be disabled.

Thanks again.

philby

 

LOL, no offence but with every release of Opera and FF i see posts like this:

-- this version is blazingly fast.....
------ it launches in a falsh and renders web pages on the fly....
------------ this version is really superfast....

If it continued like this I suspect FF5 and Opera 12 will break out of my laptop due to their supersonic speed. New versions may be fast, I agree, but not to very very significant extent.

I notice a very a significant speed difference in the launch of Iron as compared to Opera, even with minimal security set up.

 

You are right in a sense. It is google, but it's a development version meaning none of the google "stuff" is in until it's ready to be passed on as a release as chrome.

The only thing needed to be changed that iron does for you is the Localstate ID which can be made to null, which means essentially you get the benefits from iron, but in an up-to-date build.

 

Thanks. How to do that?

 

I haven't used it. This is a fast DSL connection and I don't see any need for it. Besides, in Tools> Preferences> Advanced> Network tab you can change the settings for "max connections to a server" and "max total connections".
I set them at 32 and 64 respectively and that works fine for me.