Web browsing, in its notorious present-day form, is anything but a harmonious experience. Pages take an eternity to load, graphics are often displayed incorrectly, and Java applets and plug-ins can tax even the fastest system's capabilities.

Some of our frustration with the World Wide Wait is, in fairness, due to page designers who make their sites too complex and image-filled to download quickly. But much of the blame goes in this case not to the message, but to the messengers, of the Web.

Microsoft and Netscape continue to fight a jihad,with each side making their browser products more powerful and feature-laden. Today's browsers do far more than surf the Web; they contain integrated e-mail and news clients, push technologies like Active Desktop and Netcaster and include real-time audio conferencing capabilities.

The problem is that these expanded features require larger, more complex code that takes more horsepower to run. Versions 4 of Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer require an extraordinary investment in CPU power and memory to run properly, if at all. And even when a user coaxes his or her browser to run, frequent system crashes and slow performance become the norm.

One solution to this discord on the Net comes from an appropriately-named source: Opera. Until recently, Opera was just one of many "alternative" browsers. Like offerings from the NCSA and Spyglass, it was seen as an also-ran that couldn't handle the Web as well as the big boys could. Frequently, these off-market browsers could not properly handle the more complicated HTML pages found on major commercial Web sites.

With the release of Opera 3.1 for Windows 3.x and Windows 95, however, the program has emerged as a serious technical competitor, if not a market threat, to Netscape and IE. Opera's advantage is that it is not based on the old Mosaic technology found in both of the "big two" browsers. Instead, its developers coded it from the ground up as a new product, avoiding the inefficiencies of legacy code and slow library files.

The program is a marvel of size, weighing in at under a megabyte-one-tenth to one-twentieth the size of Internet Explorer and Netscape. Similarly, its hardware requirements are downright parsimonious, working well on a 386 class PC with six megabytes of memory.

When it comes to performance, I'll be honest. I didn't believe the hyperbole I heard from the program's designers. But the industry buzz has been strong, with glowing mentions in Wired and other press sources. What hooked me, though, was the comment of Ziff-Davis's Jim Seymour, who claimed with astonishment that Opera could read 95 percent of all HTML pages more than twice as fast as Netscape or IE on any speed connection.

To my astonishment, these claims actually understated Opera's speed. On my Pentium 200 with 64 megabytes of RAM, the ABC News web site took 13 seconds to load in Navigator 4.0. Opera handled the page equally well in an astonishing four seconds. PC World magazine loaded in Opera in seven seconds (versus Netscape Navigator's 22), and Time-Warner's Pathfinder site took a blazingly-quick three seconds in Opera instead of Netscape's 12. What's more, all of these pages were rendered properly by Opera, whose authors boast full HTML 3.2 compliance.

Of course, nothing's perfect in this world. Opera's only real flaw is its lack of support for Java applets (although it renders in-line JavaScript just fine.) In reality, this is a small price to pay, since most stand-alone Java applets on the Web today are nothing more than stock or score tickers or flashy design. In addition, many specialized plug-ins are incompatible with the program, although the majors-RealAudio, Quicktime, etc.-work just fine.

Secondly, Opera is not free. It costs $35, and can be purchased from the company over the Web. A 30-day evaluation copy is available, however, at www.operasoftware.com. Only PC versions are currently available, although the company plans a Macintosh port in the near future.

Even with these small drawbacks, Opera 3.1 is an astonishing product and an amazing achievement. Keep Netscape or IE around when you just have to check out that Java-based millennium count-down timer, but for the daily Web surfing needs of real power users, there is no better browser than Opera, period.

Kevin S. Davis is an independent computer consultant and student director of the Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Service's (HASCS) Advanced Support Team. You can reach him at ksdavis@fas.harvard.edu.