What's the best beta? IE 8 vs Opera 9.5 vs Safari vs Firefox 3

Opera browser 9.5, beta 1
What's new?
The most interesting feature the lovely Norwegians at Opera Software have introduced in this version is 'Opera Link'. This syncs your bookmarks and Opera's 'Speed Dial' homepage selections with any other computers you use Opera on -- so wherever you are, you get the same browsing experience. It's similar to Firefox's Foxmarks Add-on, but having it native in a browser is a massive bonus. It worked perfectly for us across two machines. Very useful and very cool.

Another useful feature is the 'Full Text History Search'. Opera 9.5 indexes every word from every Web page you visit. You can type keywords in the URL address bar and Opera searches every site you've visited -- in real-time -- and suggests links for you. Although the suggest links list that pops down looks cluttered, it's extremely useful and a killer feature for anyone in the business of research -- students would love this.

It's worth noting that Opera is still the only browser we looked at that has a built-in mail client, and it still works well in this new beta.

How it compares
Along with linked bookmarks, the terrific page indexing and searching, and general ease-of-use makes Opera ideal for students, or indeed any researcher, who needs to quickly plagiarise look up a quote, reference or source. 

We'll be very keen to see some critical Javascript-handling errors fixed in post-beta releases, as this would increase the browser's compatibility with certain Web sites. On the whole we think this is the best version of Opera yet, but Firefox is probably still better for most people.