Opera Offers Free Licenses For Educational Use

Opera Watch writes "Opera Software today announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions. This is a change from the previous cost of $1000 (US) for unlimited licenses. It remains to be seen, however, whether Opera will allow schools to give standard Opera licenses to students to use on personal computers/laptops within campus at no additional cost, that came with the $1000 license fee. This comes after a respected university advised its students not to use Internet Explorer, for its lack of security. Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet."

Comments

Re:stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops sorry http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/sess ionsaver
take away the '/' at the end of the url.

Re:hm

[anum]

A little bit desperate maybe but a good move overall. Opera is a good browser but I'm not likely to pay money for it on my desktop. On my handheld however, I would be lost without it. Opera really shines in the embedded market and I suspect they make most of their money from this, if they don't now I'm sure that is the direction they are going. I wish them luck.
I plan to stick with firefox on my desktop for now but I bet my next phone/palm has Opera on it.

Re:stability?

[xy]

Yes, there is an extention that does this, I use it all the time. It's called SessionSaver. For some reason it's hard to track down the version that works with firefox 1.0, but I've gotten it from:
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =166

I love Opera.

[lythander]

I like Firefox, too. Firefox is an easier transition for IE users, since the interface is very similar, and on the whole it plays nicer with sites which are very IE-specific. Opera is very standards compliant, but doesn't try as hard to play nice with those who aren't.

Opera's multiple document interface is better, IMHO. It's also more featureful out of the box (I know firefox has a gazillion extensions available, many of them damn fine, but you have to go get them).

Opera has also (allegedly, I don't use it this way) taken substantial time to make it customizeable and manageable in an enterprise sense. I think it would be easier to roll out Opera to 150 machines than to roll out Firefox with the same capabilities (i.e. lots of extensions) to the same machines.

Firefox is truly FREE, Opera just doesn't have a cost for use, but for most users (the unwashed masses who care not at all about F/OSS) it doesn't matter.

Now, if Sunbird works out...

Re:I love Opera.

[brownpau]

Opera's wonderfully functional immediately on install. I'm a very keyboard-centric CSS designer on home dialup:

• Just press G, and images are toggled on/off/cached for slow connections.
• Ctrl-G, and styles are toggled on/off to see page structure on CSS layouts. (Also great for unreadable white-on-black 9px Verdana websites)
• Ctrl-Alt-J, and IRC is there to distract me from design.
• 1 and 2, and I can switch between tabs.

I love this browser's functionality via keyboard alone (I don't even use mouse gestures). You don't get all that from Firefox right out of the box.

Stereotypical not Prototypical

[glrotate]

Stereotypical-A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.

Prototypical-An original type, form, or instance serving as a basis or standard for later stages.

Re:Free as in beer

[timster]

RMS isn't saying that one of the common uses of the word is "wrong", he's just saying that the meaning he's using is the other one (free as in freedom).

Anyway, according to the dictionary that was the original meaning and the "free from payment" one came later. Obviously both are in common use.

The problem is that we think of software as a product. Consider "free speech" vs. "free books" and you get the idea. Probably RMS should have called it "free code" instead of "free software".

Re:What advantages does Opera have over Firefox?

[TheRaven64]

I haven't used FireFox much, so I don't know how many of these features it misses, but here are a few of the things I liked about Opera:

• The ability to toggle image display with a single button.
• The option to switch to your own/no CSS with a single button press (including some nice options, such as one that shows structural tags). Very nice with sites with ugly CSS.
• Much better IE compatibility than any other browser I've used.
• Mouse gestures. I know they are available as a FireFox extension, but last time I checked this didn't support my favourite one: right-drag down on a link opens the link in a new tab.
• It's tiny. Really. Around 3MB for a full featured browser and mail client.
• Easy to change User Agent string for those sites that work fine in Opera but redirect you to a `You need IE' page anyway.
• Rembers open windows / tabs on exit, so you can restart browsing at exactly the same point.
• Tabs can be re-ordered by dragging them around the tab-bar (I don't know if FireFox does this, but it's a feature I really miss in Safari).

I'm sure there were several others.