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Fan site praises Netfront, trashes Opera

Says 64MB of ram just ain't enough
Friday, 18 July 2008, 10:52

PRO-MICROSOFT fan site MSMobiles.com ran a pair of interesting stories yesterday which suggested that the new Opera 9.5 beta is buggy, admitted that Windows Mobile software is bloated by telling users to buy phones with more than 64MB of RAM, and finally indirectly praised Access Software's Netfront browser.

In a review of Opera Software's Beta release of its Opera Mobile browser version 9.5 for the Windows Mobile platform, it concludes that users of WinMob phones should "wait for the new Internet Explorer from Microsoft" or "use the NetFront 3.5 browser". Ironically NetFront 3.5 for Windows Mobile is a product of Access Software, the company which bought PalmSource and is responsible for the Access Linux Platform and the legacy Garnet OS used on Palm's Centro smartphone.

You can test Netfront 3.5 for Windows Mobile devices by downloading it from this page. MSMobile continues by saying that 64MB is apparently not enough memory to run a browser like Opera 9.5 comfortably and that phones with less than 64MB will encounter out of memory problems and crashes.

The surprises don't end there. The site also publishes a story today where it trashes the Redmond juggernaut's new "Windows Mobile Applications Directory: "here comes yet another lame attempt from Microsoft to imitate Apple! Unfortunately it is useless and you don't have to bother to visit it".

Finally it criticizes Microsoft's delays in bringing Silverlight to the firm's Mobile OS [does anyone care about Silverlight?] and ends with a doom and gloom comment on the future of the Mobile OS:

"We only hope that Windows Mobile 7 will have support for multi-touch because otherwise whole Windows Mobile (sic) may be doomed".

Not very encouraging words for the Microsoft Empire when and an unashamedly pro-Microsoft publication echoes these comments. µ

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Comments
BETA = BUGGY lol :)

errrrrrrrrrrrrrm, well blow me down !!! fancy an application that's in BETA being buggy and not working right, shame on you opera, tut, tut O_O if it was a M$hite mobile browser it would have gone gold 12 months back and cost an arm and a leg lol :O) internet exploder has been gold for around 13 years now and its still broken :O)

posted by : psychochief, 18 July 2008Complain about this comment
relevant to my interests

"64MB is apparently not enough memory to run a browser like Opera 9.5 comfortably and that phones with less than 64MB will encounter out of memory problems and crashes." I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. Having obtained opera 9.5 from a certain ***w*r*z site a while ago, I can confirm that while the functionality is elegant to say the least, it runs like a dog on my HTC Artemis (aka xda orbit; a device with no more than 64 MB RAM) I hoped the "official" latest beta would address this problem, but, no joy. I guess it's planned obsolescence/moore's law/or similar that is to blame. Not gonna buy a diamond or similar though, just for the browser; f*ck that!

posted by : upcdowncleftcrightcabc+start, 18 July 2008Complain about this comment
Well dur...

"Opera 9.5 beta is buggy".. What's the first word beginning with B in that sentence? Maybe you should pass them the following link... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta Sorry to resort to quoting the wonkipedia, but hey, if even they know a beta release will have bug, it really says something about how stupid fanboiz are!

posted by : Steve, 18 July 2008Complain about this comment
::Confused::

Is this article based on any fact, or is it just a bash on Microsoft and Pro-MS Sites? Quite honestly, the whole article seems to be a waste of space, even if I do hate Microsoft.

posted by : umm...., 18 July 2008Complain about this comment
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