Operamail future?

[horseshrink]

horseshrink @alphaville last edited by

@alphaville Oof. Didn't like that read, so I just uninstalled Opera from my machine. Had originally installed it years ago as a nod to Norway and out of curiosity. It was never a primary browser for me, but I kept various installation versions going. No need to keep it on my machine anymore.

[horseshrink]

horseshrink @burnout426 last edited by

@burnout426 I've also been pleased with Fastmail and will continue to use it with my new primary email addresses.

[alphaville]

alphaville @Guest last edited by

@wayner46

I haven't made my mind up on a choice of browser to replace Opera, I currently use Firefox and Edge (because nobody else admits to using Edge and I prefer to go where everyone else isn't). But I'm thinking that in the longer term that Vivaldi will become my default browser now that I've tried it. It took about half an hour to settle into the Vivaldi way of doing things.

The one thing I don't like about Vivaldi is the look and layout of the bookmarks pages / folders. Opera seemed to organise these much better. But no doubt I need to spend more time rearranging the look and feel of things, I'm sure there's plenty of configuration options available under the hood.

What I'm trying to say is that, now that a lot of us live half our life on the internet, the systematic organisation and categorisation of bookmarks is becoming the most important feature of a browser, at least for me. So any browser that can deliver improved access to and maintenance of a bookmark collection will win the day.

I haven't tried Brave so I can't comment. I've had a brief look, admire the concept and need to investigate further.

[A Former User]

A Former User @alphaville last edited by

@alphaville Vivaldi has much to commend itself to users who love to customize to the fullest. I've tried it in the past and just did not like the feel of it compared to Opera. I like the cleaner look and feel of Opera but I cannot bring myself to fully trust it, given its ownership. Opera has been my browser since 2000 along with Firefox and while I still check in to see how things are going, that's about as far as I take it. Today I have Firefox, Edge and Brave on my computer with Brave becoming more dominant as each day passes. To me, Brave is Chrome without the Google bloat.

[boonstra]

boonstra last edited by

It appears Fastmail is dodging legal questions by stating all requests for information should be handed to Opera.com. That's a dead end for sure, certainly when the chinese own Opera.

Anyway, Fastmail has an obligation to give full insight in this doubtful action of unilaterally stopping a service. They have responsibilities, because I have paid them for a service, also paid Opera for the service in the past.

Compare it with your phone-number, suddenly the provider says "we take your number, please take another one..." And if you protest, the provider says, ask the government. Yeah, right.

I am using my operamail account now for almost 23 years, from august 1998, and am not letting go without a fight. Specially when there are Chinese businessman involved.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

@boonstra said in Operamail future?:

I am using my operamail account now for almost 23 years, from august 1998, and am not letting go without a fight. Specially when there are Chinese businessman involved.

I'm not certain I understand your position. What is the point in trying to force the hand(s) of Opera's Chinese owners? Do you honestly believe any of them would listen, let alone care about an individual's complaints regarding a former supported product? It's an exercise in wasted energy. While you are able you should migrate your important email and contacts to a current, reliable mail service before it is too late.

[admiralty]

admiralty @Guest last edited by

@wayner46 I agree that any attempt to force the owners of the operamail address to do anything. My hope, which gets less every day, is to find someone at Opera Software who is prepared to explain what they are doing and why. As someone who has lived by believing in the f**k up theory of life as much more prevalent than the currently fashionable conspiracy theory of everything, I still suspect that the decision was an ill thought out technical or business one (e.g. "lets save money by closing down unnecessary domain names")
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, and none of us have managed to find such a someone. It is true that Fastmail could be more helpful, but they are not under any obligation, and it may be that they are happy to get shot of dealing with Opera. Clearly from the sell-out, buy back etc there is a history there.
Not given up hope yet, but busy choosing a good personal domain, and preparing for when I, personally, throw in the towel

[A Former User]

A Former User @admiralty last edited by

@admiralty Have you considered Vivaldi? Maybe take it out for a spin and see whether its mail option is something with which you can live.

[leocg]

leocg Moderator Volunteer @admiralty last edited by

@admiralty said:

My hope, which gets less every day, is to find someone at Opera Software who is prepared to explain what they are doing and why.

Isn't it clear enough? They simply don't want to keep dealing with a domain that since a long time no longer has anything to do with the company anymore.

[boonstra]

boonstra @Guest last edited by

@wayner46 --- Dear wayner46,....
Indulge me the pleasure of a similar situation:

Give me all your money, and honestly, no, I won't listen to you, never, because that's a waste of energy. And make it before yesterday !

You see, you are very easy giving up your (costumer-) rights, aren't you.

In your world, an owner of a 10 year old Volvo would have no rights, because the Chinese have bought Volvo Cars in 2010.

[A Former User]

A Former User @boonstra last edited by

@boonstra I'm not very good at following most analogies, boonstra. The way I see it, the new owners of Opera are not going to continue offering all the previous services and given the fact that the software is free, more or less, we have no rights to expect what was offered before to be continued. Opera sold us out to these Chinese owners which is essentially why so many Opera users abandoned Opera a few years back and navigated over to Vivaldi since they trusted these former Opera technicians and owner. I no longer use Opera since I patently do not trust the owners of the Opera browser (and assurances that they follow Norwegian law means nothing to me). I'm here only out of curiosity and nostalgia. My main browser is now Brave, with the new Edge sitting in the background. I've considered Vivaldi but there are aspects of their suite that I don't like so I continue with Brave. My advice remains: go to Vivaldi where they have more or less remade the older Opera suite albeit with a Blink engine.

[burnout426]

burnout426 Volunteer @Guest last edited by

@wayner46 Yeah, Vivaldi's services are made to replace the old My Opera community and the Operamail service. You can sign up for free at https://login.vivaldi.net/profile/id/signup.

For mail, you get 5GB of storage. It supports IMAP, POP, and SMTP. And, you can access it via https://webmail.vivaldi.net/ instead if you want. It also comes with a blog at yourusername.vivaldi.net.

There are also forums at https://forum.vivaldi.net/. https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/115/webmail is the section for webmail support.

You of course won't have an "@operamail.com" address. but it's a great alternative.

[burnout426]

burnout426 Volunteer @burnout426 last edited by

There's a super, super tiny chance that Jon might want to talk to Opera to see if Vivaldi can take over the operamail.com domain where Vivaldi would work with Fastmail to migrate "@operamail.com" users (that wanted to) to Vivaldi mail. Then, those users might have "@operamail.com" as an alias for receiving messages, but would still send new messages as "@vivaldi.net".

But, I don't know if he'd be interested. And, that might not work out for Fastmail users that had plans with more than 5GB of storage.

[A Former User]

A Former User @burnout426 last edited by

@burnout426 It appears that Jon has provided just about everything that was present at the Opera site just before he left. Nice. Thanks for all the links.

[boonstra]

boonstra @Guest last edited by

@wayner46 --- Too bad you can't follow analogies, you're like Drax ?

The service of Operamail was indeed initially free, but I took a paid subscription quite soon. So there is a product, and a long-term contract with liability.

The good name of Opera, the groundbreaking ideas and the shameless much copied layout,.... this all will be smeared and connected to commercialisation and dictatorship. This will lower the pleasure of using "Operamail".

I've used Opera 3.6 up until 2010, it worked for me. And yes I followed the Icelandic guy to Vivaldi, and installed it from the beginning, but prefer Brave.

Who gives me guarantees a Vivaldi.net mail won't hit the same faith ?

And for Fastmail, I'm beginning to suspect the Operamail-accounts were the very life-line of that company. If they loose all Operamail-account they could go bankrupt.

[alphaville]

alphaville @boonstra last edited by

@boonstra

I somewhat doubt that Operamail accounts are the lifeline of Fastmail - if they are then the company is in serious trouble!

There's currently some half a dozen of us bemoaning the loss of the Operamail address here on the forum and of that number at least half have decided to move on to pastures new.

If those committed to saving Operamail numbered even in the low few hundreds that might perhaps indicate a glimmer of interest in the future of the address and raise the hope that some form of determined collective action could win the day. But I can't see the critical mass required being reached in a month of Sundays - I hope you prove me wrong.

[string]

string last edited by leocg

I only found about this matter yesterday (17th April); maybe the earlier announcements were indeed feelers. It knocks my otherwise good impressions of Fastmail.

I too have used Operational from its very beginning, when one could still get 3 letter user names so I flattered myself by using my own initials. That would be a further rational for wanting to keep my email address as is, but not enough to surmount the Chinese connection which to me and many is synonymous with a disregard for ethical behaviour, and a Trojan Horse to boot

Current moderators excepted of course.

So, what with the remarks so far in this thread, I have also come to the conclusion that there is no option but to change my email address from Operamail and face the hassle of re-registering a multitude of registrations. That should keep me busy until my present Fastmail subscription runs out next Feb.

But of course before doing that I have to choose which new email to have since I don't want to do things twice so the opinions here have been useful.

I like the Fastmail software but concerned (about how stable that will be, I signed up to the Vivaldi Mail today and need to check that out - it looks promising, Gmail I have already but find it clunky and there may be others. But I suspect that of these Vivaldi will win out.

I stopped using Opera Mail some time ago. Looking at it now and then to see if had to become attractive to me. The reasons I left Opera were: the loss of the Vital need to have a proper bookmarking capability, the Forum cancellation, and of course the loss of the email capability. Now I would add the Chinese Dragon lurking in the background. Any one of those would have been enough reason to go. Its Mail capability was the original reason I took it up in the first place.

Naturally I followed what was happening with Vivaldi and Otter; I also used the DnD Discussion Forum https://thedndsanctuary.eu which is worth visiting -old timers will find some familiar folk there .... especially if we all get shunted off for looking away from Opera.

Anyway, Browser-wise Vivaldi matured first and their Bookmark system was OK (and improving but not yet perfect and I agree with the remark that it needs some further "maturing" - but it has been improving in that regard. Now they add a Mail Client of some sort and the result may very well succeed..

Alternatively MS Outlook, not something I've used at all, but maybe allied to my existing gmail could function with some stability.

We shall see.

[A Former User]

A Former User @string last edited by

@string I remember you from the old forums and always appreciated your insight. I entirely agree regarding your assessment of the lurking Chinese dragon which is essentially why I have removed Opera from my computers. I've moved my email over to Outlook and it seems to be working fine. I've no idea how Vivaldi would compare with the original Opera Mail. Maybe someone with a Vivaldi mail account could chime in here.

[string]

string @Guest last edited by

@wayner46 said in Operamail future?:

@string

Nice words James

Those were the days!

I'm so old now I've had 2 Jabs of Vaccine!

[A Former User]

A Former User @string last edited by

@string Ha! My wife and will receive our second jab in two weeks. I'm now mid-70's, string. Time is flying so fast now and all the days seem pretty much the same. My career ended 20 years ago but my health remains intact. I really miss the old Opera forums and the Community blogs (so many wonderful pages/blogs disappeared into the ethernet). I've wondered if Vivaldi's community is similar but haven't made that jump.