Opera 9 is out of beta today. It was a public beta, so most people have already tried it, including me. Its a very competent browser, with some great new features, including built in bittorrent and the big one -widgets. There are some interesting widgets available, like a Pandora widget which will allow you to play your pandora music from your desktop without using your browser. I imagine the widgets are easier to develop than other platforms, since making widgets for Opera is no different from developing web pages.

I’m not sure why I don’t use Opera – for some reason I prefer Firefox, even though Opera has some enticing features. I do use the excellent Opera Mini (a java browser for mobiles), and through all their products Opera Software really seems to be expanding their reputation. Read more in the press release.