OSWeekly compares Opera 8.0 to Pocket IE. “Pocket IE is suitable for casual browsers who seldom use their mobile devices for serious surfing. The innovative features of Opera bring it very close to its desktop counterpart. If all you do is check mails and that too seldom, we would recommend Pocket IE. If you are that tech-savvy person who would not settle for anything but the best, we would hands down recommend Opera as the mobile browser of choice.”
settle for an inferior product just because your use of it is more ‘seldom’ than ‘often’?
Why not let software quality decide?
Edited 2006-08-21 09:40
settle for an inferior product just because your use of it is more ‘seldom’ than ‘often’?
If that’s the case, we’d all be driving Rolls Royces, Bentlys, and, oddly enough, Toyotas (most reliable car brand).
If all cars were free – or the same price, then that would be a good analogy.
And as Opera for mobile devices (24$) and Pocket IE (bundled with Windows CE) are not the same price, this seems to be a good analogy.
Yes, but $24 is a far cry from $400,000 for a new bently. In the US, I doubt there are many people that can afford a PDA but can’t afford $24 for something, where as very few people can afford a six digit car. So, the analogy is still dumb.
What you are trying to do is say the OP’s statement is false, which it is. If I use the browser on my pda once in a blue moon, then why should I spend $24 to make it a little nicer? Its just not worth it. Were they both free, it would be completly worth using it.
It is true that we’d probably all opt for the ‘best’ product at a given time – if we could afford it…
In this case I’d reckon that $24 is hardly an extra cost worth considering, in case the software (Opera) is that much better, even for limited use…
And formally, you do not answer the question since you just add a premise to the argument, you do not actually agree or disagree in a logical sense.
What you do is to imply that you find the argument unsound.
Opera isn’t free (as in free beer), so if you’re not really using it, it’s not worth the price. It’s a pity they didn’t include minimo ( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/ ) in their study, even if it’s far from finished.
This seems really more like a comparison of CE-based browsers, so Minimo definitely should have been included. Calling it a “mobile” browser round up is misleading, as Pocket IE isn’t even available for a large number of mobile devices that you can get Opera and other browsers on.
Edited 2006-08-21 10:40
1. What is the difference between Opera Mini and Opera Mobile?
2. Since about 90% of all Flash on the web are either useless animations or advertisements, is the lack of Flash on these browsers really a bad thing?
1. Opera Mini is a proxy browser. All of your traffic is funneled through Opera’s servers, where it is reformatted so it can be viewed on very small screens like cell phones. It’s much smaller than Opera Mobile, but also lacks many of it’s features. Opera Mobile, on the other hand, is almost as fully featured as it’s desktop counterpart. You see it most commonly used on PDAs and SmartPhones.
2. Flash support in a mobile browser would certainly be nice for certain sites like Flickr, but it’s silly to expect to see support for it when Adobe doesn’t even have a version of Flash for embedded devices. Maybe someone can incorporate some work from the GNU Gnash project, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
It’s not really a review, per se, more of a feature comparison. I’d like to read how the features work when you’re actually trying to use them.
And if you’re doing a mobile browser comparison, it should be mandatory to run a speed check from DSL Reports! All browsers are not the same when run on mobile devices.
Since the very advent of Internet, Microsoft Internet Explorer remained the preferred browser on Windows and Mac platforms. Since it came bundled with the operating systems, netizens had to look nowhere for a quality browser.
After these 2 sentences, I really considered not reading the rest of the article.
The web server explanation was rather lacking as well. Same for the difference between Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. Nokia 3120? Sure. However, my SE K600i is not exactly a “low-class” device and still Opera Mini is the best available browser for it.
After these 2 sentences, I really considered not reading the rest of the article.
IE became the “preferred browser on Windows and Mac platforms”, starting with IE4. I think that few people would suggest that Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4 were better than IE4.
Yes, IE became popular with IE4.
However, there were older versions of IE before IE 4.0
There were web browsers before IE.
There was [iI]nternet before the WWW.
Hence claiming Since the very advent of Internet, Microsoft Internet Explorer remained the preferred browser on Windows and Mac platforms. is incorrect and IMHO borders on “stupid”.
IE could have been considered a quality browser in the time frame starting with the appearance of IE4 and ending with Opera and Firefox appearing.
Personally, growing up on NN, I liked NN4 better than IE4. So I would not agree with netizens had to look nowhere for a quality browser either.
the company I work for just started a rollout of new sales units based on the HP IPAQ.
for sales orders transmissions, we decided to go with Opera over IE…good thing the corp discount brings it down to $18.