14 DAY TRIAL // The Opera Internet browser has been upgraded once more and a new stable version, 34, is now available for download. It brings a ton of changes and improvements, but the most important seems to be the refined technology for data compression, also know under the name of Opera Turbo.
If you're using Opera at home or at work, it's not likely that you've ever needed to activate the Turbo function, but it's more important than people might think. One of today's realities is that not all of the Internet connections out there have unlimited data plans. In fact, most of the mobile data plans have limits and many countries are also enforcing them for regular connections.
Functions like Opera Turbo helps people keep the data consumption down and save money in the process, so it's easy to see why that is important. This is done by rerouting the traffic through their servers and compressing it.
Some minor quality compromises are present, but it's well worth the effort. From the looks of it, the Opera developers have made good progress and further improvements.
Opera 34 is about more than just Turbo
The Opera developers didn't release a new version of the browser with just a single improvement. In fact, there have been several Beta releases in the past month or so, with lots of smaller additions.
For example, MSE audio support has been added, URL suggestions have been introduced, more tiles for the start page can be enabled, the NPAPI plug-in is making a return (Opera should now be able to play all Flash videos), Linux proprietary codecs have been implemented, and of course it's using a new Chromium base.
You can download the latest Opera 34 for Linux from Softpedia, and the Windows and Mac OS X versions can be downloaded from the same page. Enjoy!