obobskivich wrote:

Opera 12.x is/was great (and it's a shame Presto was replaced with WebKit/Blink/Chromium); just to point out though: they have released a more recent update, 12.19, to address Heartbleed. That's probably the last update that 12.x will ever receive though. You can get it here: http://www.opera.com/download/guide/?ver=12.19

If it still won't let you replace google with startpage as the default search engine, I have no intentions of ever touching that thing. They also appear to have deliberately messed up the 12x browser line after 12.14 to make it less stable, less compatible and more sluggish so to force people to switch to what they're trying to push now.

obobskivich wrote:

I've noticed in recent months many newer script-heavy sites being problematic with 12.19 though - nothing has really flagged it (whereas running an older version of Firefox, for example, can result in many Google sites popping up a warning)

No problem there for me as I have everything related to google and social media in general (very heavily scripted) completely blocked off, saving a few hosts necessary for searching, previewing and watching videos on youtube.

If have set proxomitron to first try the mobile version of a page, that too can lift up some of the burden.

obobskivich wrote:

but it is certainly starting to show its age compared to active-development browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox. In terms of objective security and compatibility testing, Presto no longer leads the pack like it once did, but there's still worse offenders out there (like embedded variants of Chrome) - with additional layered security (e.g. DNS filtering, script blocking, etc) its still not completely unserviceable though.

Thankfully the web sites I visit still work as well as they used to years ago. For the time being, 12.14 is likely to stay with me.

Any desktop browser will let you change the the search engine. Chrome itself supports it, and I always change to DDG. (But I use IE nowadays. It's got integrated adblock, so that helps.)

Opera was really nice. Could browse the modern web securely and quickly on P3 class hardware. Nowadays, thanks to mobile optimizations, Firefox/Chrome has caught up.

Lo Wang wrote:

If it still won't let you replace google with startpage as the default search engine, I have no intentions of ever touching that thing. They also appear to have deliberately messed up the 12x browser line after 12.14 to make it less stable, less compatible and more sluggish so to force people to switch to what they're trying to push now.

12.17 you can set whatever default search engine you like (I use DuckDuckGo but you can really create whatever you want - just go into Settings -> Preferences -> Search and either use one of the integrated options (it comes with a few popular ones) or add your own manually. To do that, go to whatever site you want, perform a query, and then whatever that string becomes you replace with %s in the window, and assign it a hotkey (it can be a default like "g" or "b" or whatever). So for example on DuckDuckGo:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=AMD

Where "AMD" is the query. Replace "AMD" with "%s" in the Search Preferences. You can do this with anything that uses a search engine feature like that, so you could even do it with Vogons' search, like this:
search.php?keywords=AMD

And replace "AMD" with "%s" again.

As far as later 12.x being unstable, I don't remember specifically which version it was, but I do remember a release somewhere between 12.10 and 12.16/17 being buggier, and I remember downgrading to the previous version (probably 12.10) until the next version after came out. I'd say give 12.17 a try though. 😊

calvin wrote:

Any desktop browser will let you change the the search engine. Chrome itself supports it, and I always change to DDG. (But I use IE nowadays. It's got integrated adblock, so that helps.)

Opera was really nice. Could browse the modern web securely and quickly on P3 class hardware. Nowadays, thanks to mobile optimizations, Firefox/Chrome has caught up.

Newer versions of Opera (which are built on Chrome) and some other browsers will not let you remove Google as a search engine, and many will force it as a default due to branding agreements. Also in some cases you can only add search engines as plug-ins or extensions, as opposed to being fully customizable like Opera 12.x. Chrome also collects and returns a lot of data to Google by default, which both uses more transfer, and annoys many users because of questions about privacy and security.

Currently the most privacy/security-conscious browsers available seem to be forked variants of Firefox, like Comodo IceDragon or Pale Moon. They also tend to be fairly light. Either can be a decent replacement for Opera 12.x. IceDragon will become problematic with various Google services because it forked from an older variant of Firefox, and is identified as such, Pale Moon isn't quite as bad in that regard (both are independent forks of Firefox, but many sites will read them as Firefox 20-something). The downside is that newer versions of Firefox require SSE2, which means no Pentium 3, no Athlon, no AthlonXP, etc. Pale Moon has a semi-recent build that will work without SSE2, and TenFourFox might work without SSE2 (TenFourFox is designed primarily for PPC though).

obobskivich wrote:

Newer versions of Opera (which are built on Chrome) and some other browsers will not let you remove Google as a search engine, and many will force it as a default due to branding agreements

I remember a lot of people complaining about it as it was introduced in 12.15 and the Opera team completely turning a blind eye to any post related to the issue.

From the official Opera 12.15 changelog: "Fixed an issue where the search bar's default engine could be overridden by third-party apps"

Yeah right.

Lo Wang wrote:

I remember a lot of people complaining about it as it was introduced in 12.15 and the Opera team completely turning a blind eye to any post related to the issue.

From the official Opera 12.15 changelog: "Fixed an issue where the search bar's default engine could be overridden by third-party apps"

Yeah right.

Yeah I think it was 12.15 that was the problem child; try 12.16/17, you should like it. It absolutely allows you to change default search engines, and modify other settings, as with previous versions. 😊

Back in the dialup days I used to live in a pretty classy area with the latest in connectivity so at home we went from 56kbps dialup to 320kbps DOCSIS... it felt amazing at the time, since the web was so much lighter everything was crazy fast. Shortly after a friend of mine got 128kbps service and sure it felt faster than dialup, but not as dramatic as what I was experiencing. Guess that spoiled me a bit. 🙄

Recently got a speed upgrade. To get this thread back on track about internet speeds:

I'm sorry, rest of the first world.

Right now:

At night when there's nobody else online:

yea umm my uverse is online now my speeds are now 48mb/s im happy again 🤣

jwt27 wrote:

Right now: http://www.speedtest.net/result/4344279005.png […]
Show full quote

Right now:

At night when there's nobody else online:

That upload speed