The newest version of Opera is running loose in the world.  Excited?  You should be:

Some of the most interesting features and ones which I constantly take advantage of I will mention briefly here.

Opera allows you to sync your bookmarks between any number of computers (across platforms) and with Web access instantly through their Opera Link feature.  This sync tool also syncronizes a number of other browser features as well.

Opera has a flexible and powerful built-in notes feature (which can be synqued).  You can copy portions of Web pages directly into a note and mail your notes later.

The layout and look of Opera are completely manipulable.  My arrangement of panels, toolbars, and buttons have little resemblance to what came out of the box.  I don’t use skins usually, but if you are into that sort of thing Opera makes it very easy.  Through this you can make the browser look and perform in ways that are most comfortable to you and the way that you work.

Opera employs mouse gestures.  When I tell folks about mouse gestures they are often rather cool to the idea.  Until they try them.  Once they understand how mouse gestures work, they have no desire to turn away from them.  Mouse gestures are so infectious you will yearn for your file browsers and other applications to use them.

Opera has been using tabbed browsing for nearly ten years.  Others may act like they invented it (I’m looking at you, Internet Explorer) but even Opera didn’t invent them.  They’ve merely employed them in the best manner.  If you accidentally close tabs (or even entire windows) you can reopen them using the trash can located to the right of all your tabs.  And navigating between tabs is extremely simple, with thumbnail views of each tab upon mouse-over.  You can even move your tabs around, arrange them in any order you’d like—you can even create new windows from tabs or move tabs between windows.  (It doesn’t have tab specific crashing, but give it time.)

It’s ad-blocking, image blocking, and site-specific preferences are unparalleled—and they are all available by a simple right-click on a Web page.

And Opera can do all of this out of the box with a smaller memory footprint than its competitors.  It also wins test after test in the browser wars.  Lifehacker loves Opera.

There are many others but I wanted to give out some of my favorites.

Make the switch now.  You won’t regret it.