Opera on Wii not worth it, even for free.

Submitted by Stephen Munn on December 27, 2006 – 12:03 pm11 Comments

It may seem an odd statement to make, but it’s not even worth waiting the surprising amount of time it take for the free demo of Opera for Wii to download. It’s fun to look at Aeropause on the TV, zooming in, everything renders well, it’s all fine. But the big appeal is email from the couch without staring at an LCD, and you can’t do that because the text entry box periodically closes itself for no reason at all, and more often than not, ending a sentence with a period and hitting space immediately ends your last word with “.us”. Predictive text that does that at the end of sentences? Hello, alpha build.

So I’m holding out for a good browser and a Wii-keyboard. Heh, Wiiboard. I’m good.

Load times are not bad, I expected worse. And it’s nice as a read-only solution. And hunt and peck with a pointer is too slow for composing long emails or Aeropause posts, but in a world where we’re used to excellent free browsers like Firefox, the thought that we’d be expected to pay for Opera before too long is kind of unconscionable.

The best thing? I can read my world news at news.bbc.co.uk without waiting for my ridiculously obsolete computer to boot up and yell at me for not buying the new Norton Antivirus, so I’m “open to new threats”. If I could Aeropause from the couch, I could leave my computer off all the time, since my PC won’t run anything newer than Sims 2.

Tags: internet channel, opera, web browser

Subnet6

“it’s not even worth waiting the surprising amount of time it take for the free demo of Opera for Wii to download”

“But the big appeal is email from the couch without staring at an LCD”

Wow, I couldn’t disagree more. It sounds like you want this to replace your computer which is somewhat ridiculous. The TV is not the ideal location for a browser even under the best of circumstances (with keyboard, fast load times, etc).

I have totally different expectations for the Wii browser and because of that I am not only satisfied, but I’m pleasantly surprised.

I have no interest in replacing my PC as my main web portal. My desire for the wii is to replace those functions for which I often have to run up to my office for the sole purpose of checking something on the web that takes a few seconds.

Things like using DEXonline to check an address/phone number, checking movie listings, or the weather. Its also pretty great for watching youtube videos.

So yeah, if you were crazy enough to think that a free webTV portal might replace your PC, you’re probably pretty disappointed. If you see it as a nice extension of the web into a room in the house where you didn’t have web access before, it really is very good.

And for those who want to compare this to firefox being free, set up your PC to run firefox with your TV as the monitor and then tell me what you think. Firefox blows on a TV just so you know.
Mac

I love searching the net on the wii, sure you miss out on the keyboard and mouse, but it’s still a great extra nintendo decided to add. what suprised me most was the abilities to watch videos from places like youtube and google video. I say definitely worth it. with all those USB slots thiers bound to be keyboard compatibility eventually. It’s a good thing to use if you want to check something out. Does the ps3 offer web browsing (i’m curious)?

p.s. opera downloaded in under a minute for me, it was hard to notice with the fun mario minigame
Subnet6

Yeah Mac, I totally agree. I had often thought of hooking up a cheap ass PC in my basement so I could hit the web if needed without running all the way to my second story. For instance, I was compiling all the episodes of Blade the Series on my DVR the other day. I’m saving them to DVD and I didn’t know what order the episodes originally aired. I was able to hop on the Wii and hit epguides.com to check the airdates and order without getting off the couch. It was perfect.

Also, I forgot to mention that I personally had no intention of using the Wii for email. When I do email I do it in batch. I get and send a LOT of email to the idea of emailing from my couch never occurred to me. I have had a PC on my TV before and a keyboard on the couch is just lame. I hated it. The TV is typically a shite web viewing source. It was only through the implimentation of the one handed web browsing capable with the wii-mote and painless zoom feature (that I actually don’t need on most sites) that enabled webTV to become a real and useful service for me. I don’t like the idea of paying for it, but if the rumor of $5 is true, I would most definitely pony up for it.
Mac

another good post Subnet6. I completely agree with you about opera being a quick and easy way to check your resources. I just put all my reference web sites as favorites, such as wikipedia and imdb. It’s also easier to show items on the internet(videos, documents, news stories, weather) on a large t.v. than to try to fit a bunch of people around my computer in my tiny room. I think we’ve hit all the positives now.
robby1051

So you 2 don’t think emailing from my yahoo account or posting to myspace from the wii is a good idea?
isnt that just simple broweser things that should be part of any online experience?
sure maybe keyboards will be allowed in the future but in the meantime making it complicated to write a email doesnt sound very user friendly.
and before you assume I am trying to replace my computer, i usually keep my laptop opne and right next to me on the couch because the 360 has no browser at all.
Subnet6

Thats not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that expecting ANY webtv device to excel at data entry [like typing emails] is a misunderstanding of the application. Sure it supports email but most people realize there are inherent flaws with webtv. These flaws are text legibility and typing among others and it is precisely these flaws that caused it to fail. Nintendo can’t magically make webtv equal to our pc’s when the TV As a platform is what it is. Maybe it’s because I remembered webtv when it was introduced that I had differing expectations. In any case I never expected opera for wii to be good for email. Personally I don’t know why anyone would use webmail from home anyway. Webmail is horribly slow but thats another conversation.

-posted from my wii
James

It’s kind of rough to really paste it this early. It is only the beta so I imagine the kind of problems you’re running into will be fixed for the final release.
Subnet6

James,

Sure, we shouldn’t judge the product solely from the trial version. But what I’m trying to make clear is that there are certain applications, for which, the Wii will never be really good. WebTV has it’s limits and the Wii will not likely somehow overcome them. To expect it to, and for free, is doing the Wii and Opera a disservice.

For my part, I expect to use the Wii to do some light browsing and to check the web for information I can’t get offline in a way that is convenient enough that I don’t feel compelled to go boot my PC. It provides this now, albeit in a less than polished form. I expect Nintendo and Opera to improve the experience for the final release, no doubt. There are some obvious typing flaws that can be fixed, a few rendering issues and some missing features I would like to see implimented, but I don’t expect the grievances addressed in the initial post to be addressed fully if at all. I highly doubt the Wii will ever be a high caliber webmail portal.

It really is a matter of expectations. I have a car and its pretty nice. It’s not a sports car and it’s not truck. I don’t expect it to do what those vehicles do, even though they are all forms of personal transportation. If I expected my car to go perform like a sports car I would be disappointed, even though my car is pretty good. Likewise if people expect Opera for the Wii to do things as good or better than a PC then they will really be disappointed.

Like I said, try firefox sometime on your TV in your living room. I promise you’ll be disappointed in that as well compared to a PC. Nevermind the fact that most people don’t want a keyboard and mouse in their living room.

All that being said, of course this product will not be all things to all people. It certainly won’t satisfy “power users”. I really think it is designed for Web “lite”. People can watch the news and then check their stocks online, or if something on TV piques their interest, perhaps look up some info on it while the thought is handy.
http://machiavelliannerd.wordpress.com/files/2006/11/before-storm.jpg The Nerd

Yep. I agree so far.

I’m hoping that Opera will listen to the feedback they get from users and act on it to make a better final version.

Unfortunately, I doubt that will be the case.
http://www.consolecolors.com Kat

All I ever wanted from a console browser is to be able to check hints and walkthroughs without having to go to the computer, and now that I have my PSP and can put text files on it (and view those through the browser), I don’t need a console browser. It’s a little bit wonky in how it displays text, but it’s much faster than taking the computer out of standby.
petter

opera developers do read comments and we take them seriously.