Operamail future?
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A Former User 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 Volunteer 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.
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burnout426 Volunteer 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.comdomain 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.
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A Former User 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.
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boonstra 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.
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alphaville last edited by
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.
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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.
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A Former User 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.
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string last edited by
@wayner46 said in Operamail future?:
Nice words James
Those were the days!
I'm so old now I've had 2 Jabs of Vaccine!
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A Former User 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.
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boonstra last edited by boonstra
@string -> Back on topic:
The ownership of a mail-account, is the very same as "owning" a website. For example "mywebsite-com" is facilitated by "WebSiteHost-big-business Inc". Just because the company "WebSiteHost" wants to use "mywebsite-com" for another client, does not give them the right just to stop facilitating. Period.This would mean the very end of every website.
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string last edited by
@wayner46 Glad to hear you'll soon be "maxing out" on the jabs. It's a nice feeling when it's done.
I'm not really getting anywhere with my search for a new "email base". In the course of that I looked at the MS 365 Personal Offer, not that it provides an email but it does come with a usable slice of Cloud Storage. But on checking the situation should I fall off my perch and my wife had to access the data I had stored there, I found the MS are less than obliging on that front and apply extreme fussiness to releasing data which she must have. That means that MS 365 is at risky and messy. I haven't looked yet but I presume that will apply to Outlook as well, being in the MS Stable.
Now my Operamail has stopped receiving email; it is not my week!
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A Former User last edited by
@string said in Operamail future?:
I found the MS are less than obliging on that front and apply extreme fussiness to releasing data which she must have. That means that MS 365 is at risky and messy. I haven't looked yet but I presume that will apply to Outlook as well, being in the MS Stable.
My wife and I use Lastpass and linked out accounts via "family" sharing. This means that she is (and would be in the event of my untimely demise) able to access my accounts including Office 365 (she has had an MS Office 365 account for years with the ability to put it on 4 devices one of which is my laptop). So my OneDrive and Outlook is available to her (all my documents, pictures and so forth). Should we decide to dump Lastpass (and I've considered this more than once) we would only opt for a password manager that would give us a similar "family" account. Just a thought. Sorry to hear about your Opera mail. I lost mine a long time back.
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A Former User last edited by
@string I should also add, that recently I have downloaded the latest version of Vivaldi along with their email client. I believe it has a great deal of promise. In fact, Vivaldi has a very active forum as well as individual blogs much like the Opera of old. Every indication at this point is that Vivaldi might very well be a dark horse that will gain traction as more discover its many virtues (and for me one of those would be implicit trust). You might want to check it out if you haven't already.
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arobbo last edited by
Skimming through the responses and a thought just occurred to me: perhaps the undignified shafting of @operamail.com (domain, email service) and the resulting outcry relates more to the loss of trust such a move has generated. Another signal that our "digital signature", or presence, really counts for nought in a technological environment that while it may say much about the value we represent as individuals (looking at you, Outlook365) - we are aught but electrical commodities to these businesses of "communication". I think that no-one is served to be treated or ignored as a "neo-Luddite" for not simply adopting a new digital "skin" when losing a decades-old email identity. Especially when it has worked so well for so long, and been paid for the service.
My 2c (with archaic English for garnish) -
boonstra last edited by
@arobbo -> Indeed, the result is a "loss of trust"...
One thing Politics/Government and Big Companies agree upon, is the ultimate desire to erase memory. Orwell called it rewriting history. Politicians want to be able to "sell" the same (broken) promise again, and companies want you to buy the same faulty product again, and forget the bad experience with the previous purchase... It's all over history, erasing archives, erasing memory, just be stupid, obey and consume.
Back on subject, in 1998 my mail was stored in a server in Oslo, then it went to HongKong, and from there it went to Australia.So far all good. But now the Chinese have bought Opera and Operamail. So my mail will be under control of the Communist Party. No thanks. My Social Credibility Score in China will be in the red......
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A Former User last edited by
@boonstra said in Operamail future?:
Back on subject, in 1998 my mail was stored in a server in Oslo, then it went to HongKong, and from there it went to Australia.So far all good. But now the Chinese have bought Opera and Operamail. So my mail will be under control of the Communist Party. No thanks. My Social Credibility Score in China will be in the red......
This is exactly what I have been saying for a few years now. As a result, I have uninstalled Opera since I have no trust in the new ownership which is undoubtedly under the control of the Communist Party (which incidentally has obscene human rights practices).
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boonstra last edited by boonstra
@wayner46 -> Small correction, the main Fastmail servers are located in NJ and NY. There are several scattered in other locations, also in the Netherlands, Europe.
The only thing Fastmail lacks is an end-to-end encryption, and having the main server in the USA, will not really make it very private. Personally I put more trust in the Russian democracy then in the voting system in the "land of the free".......
I am a sort of system administrator for my family, and currently replacing/removing Opera on all systems with Brave and Vivaldi. Also dumped Teamviewer for NoMachine, works great !
And you're right, there is a foul taste on Opera with it's new owners.
Addition, statement of Fastmail in 2013:
Australia does not have any equivalent to the US National Security Letter, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it.https://fastmail.blog/company/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-us-what-this-means-for-you
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