Opera 10 Turbo: A Browser for Bad Connections

If you travel a great deal, you’ve probably experienced the frustrations that come with surfing or even trying to post blog entries on a bad connection. Whether you’re on an overloaded wifi, a cell phone connection or even your in-law’s dial-up, as I am right now, you know how frustrating it can be to be away from your home or office’s broadband Web.

However, Opera’s latest testing browser, Opera Turbo, hopes to make those connections just a little bit more bearable. By compressing sites before you download them, Opera Turbo can provide you the exact same site, but with only a third to a fifth of the data, making the sites you visit load many times faster.

Though it has its limitations, it is easy to see why this browser should be in the toolbox of any blogger that routinely takes to the road. Even if you don’t like the Opera browser itself, its ability to make the Web move faster on slow connections can be a life saver when you find yourself measuring your loading time in minutes.

How it Works

Opera Turbo works by passing your data through what it calls a “Opera Web Optimization Proxy”. This means that, when you enable Turbo, your browser connects to Opera’s servers, which in turn pull the sites you want to view, compresses them, and then streams the compressed data to your computer.

The result is that your browser is able to load the same sites while downloading significantly less data. In fact, Opera Turbo constantly displays your “average compression” with the amount of data saved. After several days worth of use, I’ve found that, for me, the compression ratio hovers around 3x-4x, meaning that the connection needs to download only one third to one quarter of the data.

This should mean a much faster connection under limited bandwidth conditions. Where users of broadband connections likely won’t notice any effect, once they find themselves over a dialup connection or a choked-out wifi, the difference becomes very clear.

However, all of this extra speed under duress comes with some drawbacks though should definitely be considered before flipping the switch.

Limitations

As one might have guessed, it is impossible to compress data so much without there being some drawbacks, here are some of the less desirable changes that come with Turbo mode:

• Image Compression: The images downloaded while in Turbo mode have a very high compression and it shows. Images, especially large ones, look very blurry.
• Plug-ins: Though plugins such as Flash should work with Opera Turbo, you may have to request that the browser download those elements specifically and the compression doesn’t seem to be very good. Opera Turbo works by far better with static text and image sites.
• Specific Site Issues: Though Opera Turbo isn’t supposed to change the sites you view, I did notice some sites have issues such as Twitter, which wouldn’t let me follow people, and Gmail hangups, even when in HTML mode.
• Secure Connections: Any data transmitted over a secure connection bypasses the Turbo feature for security and privacy reasons. As such, you’ll have to make sure Gmail is not set to default to a secure connection (and likely use HTML mode) and don’t expect any miracles with your banking sites or PayPal.
• Privacy: Since all of your traffic has to first pass through Opera’s servers, there are obvious privacy concerns. Though Opera claims to not retain any personal data, you’ll still want to read through their privacy policies to ensure that you are comfortable with using the browser.

The end result of all of this is that Opera Turbo does provide a much faster connection but the mileage of that benefit varies. Some sites load almost instantly on any connection where others seem to load at the same pace as before or, worse yet, have some problems.

If you use it carefully and are comfortable with the privacy issues, it can provide a real speed boost. However, don’t expect any miracles. Your dial up connection is not going to feel like broadband.

Bottom Line

For me and my family, the new Opera Turbo browser has been a Godsend. Since they live in a rural part of the state, where even satellite Internet is not possible, they are limited to a poor-quality dial up connection. However, with Opera Turbo, this has become almost bearable, even for someone, like myself, used to a cable modem.

For the first time in years, tabbed browsing has become practical, within reason, and I’m even able to blog and maintain my sites without driving into town and looking for a Wifi connection. Fortunately, WordPress backends seem to be among the sites that work extremely well with Opera Turbo.

To my in-laws, who live with this connection day-to-day, they have been impressed at how much faster Opera Turbo is. Though I’m not sure if they plan on using it full-time, they definitely seem to be glad to have it on their system.

As such, if you routinely find yourself on bad Web connections, this might be a browser to keep on your laptop or, better yet, on a flash drive to take with you.

You never know when you’re going to need Web access and might be stuck with a connection from 1996.

Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today
Posted on March 17th, 2009 and filed under Software & Programs
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