Opera 10 Alpha now includes Opera Turbo compression

Today on the official Opera blog the company announced the release of Turbo in the newest version 10 alpha build. Turbo is a server-side technology designed to compress data before sending it to your computer, resulting (hopefully) in a bandwidth savings and speed increase.
You'll notice a few differences with turbo enabled, such as reduced quality on images and some missing content like Flash - which is supported but may not load unless you click on the element first. SSL-protected content does not get passed through the compression servers for obvious privacy and security reasons.
After giving it a try on my desktop, I found that several pages actually loaded more slowly, likely due to the additional processing by Opera's servers. Using NetLimiter as suggested in the blog post, however, Turbo definitely improved Opera's performance.
Turbo is an interesting feature to keep an eye on, especially if you find yourself dealing with constrained bandwidth from time to time.
You'll notice a few differences with turbo enabled, such as reduced quality on images and some missing content like Flash - which is supported but may not load unless you click on the element first. SSL-protected content does not get passed through the compression servers for obvious privacy and security reasons.
After giving it a try on my desktop, I found that several pages actually loaded more slowly, likely due to the additional processing by Opera's servers. Using NetLimiter as suggested in the blog post, however, Turbo definitely improved Opera's performance.
Turbo is an interesting feature to keep an eye on, especially if you find yourself dealing with constrained bandwidth from time to time.












Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsErikMar 13th 2009 5:48PM
This should at least be useful when the gprs/edge tethered connection through my phone is not cooperating.
BrianMar 14th 2009 4:21AM
This is going to be great for use on tethered connections / air cards. Mr. Mathews seems to have missed the point of Opera's compression approach.
It seems fairly obvious. Their devs know we don't need compression on web pages when we're connected to the internet using 20mbps wired connections.
Lee MathewsMar 14th 2009 8:17AM
No, Brian, I understand the point exactly. I merely wanted to gauge the impact of using Turbo on a highspeed connection.
KorangulationMar 14th 2009 11:26AM
Perfect timing! I"ll be visiting home soon and the parents only have a 64K connection.