Firefox vs. Opera

A friend of mine asked me to compare using Opera with Firefox, so I used both for a few hours of browsing to see how they compared.

Upsides
1. Its as fast as Firefox is or vice-versa
2. If you download email onto your computer, you may find the opera mail feature useful but I cant tell how good it is as I didnt use it.

Sorry, but I couldn't find more.

Downsides
1. I find the interface too cluttered, big contrast with firefox which is as minimalistic as things get.
2. The ad window (in the free version, paid costs $39) is also annoying as my pages have gotten smaller, very annoying. You'll really notice this when you switch between Opera and FF, very obvious.
3. Search feature isnt flexible, firefox lets you search hundreds of sites from within the broswer, literally and you can add your own :)
4. Its ad blocking is nowhere close to ad-block, not even close....
5. No extensions, for me this is a big deal, it really makes my browsing better.
6. I dont understand the way it handles RSS feeds or why it does what it does. My impression is that its using a default system used to handle emails/messages to handle RSS, very clunky.

Minor Cribs
1. Extensions again, no music control from within the browser. You may find this more important that I do.
2. Another extension i didnt write about but you may like is "blog this" on right click, it takes the text to a new window, redirects to blogger, signs you in, and gives you the edit post page with the correct URL hyperlink in place. As ever, try it..