DailyTech - Opera for Nintendo DS July 24

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Software Opera for Nintendo DS July 24
Brandon Hill (Blog) - June 24, 2006 8:12 PM

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8 comment(s) - last by MercenaryForHi.. on Jun 26 at 5:01 PM

Opera scores another win with Nintendo

DailyTech previously reported that Nintendo had selected Opera as the browser of choice for its Wii gaming console. Opera Software has announced that it has set a July 24th launch date for the browser on the Nintendo DS platform in Japan. When the browser launches in Japan, it will be priced at around 3,800 yen or about $33 USD.

There was no date specified for US or European launches of the Opera DS browser, but more details will be revealed on our around the launch in late July. If you may recall, Opera Software just recently released its Opera 9 web browser for Windows, Apple and Linux platforms. That release brought about some nifty features like native BitTorrent support and widgets.

July 24th should be a rather big day in the tech industry -- AMD's new price cuts will go into effect on that date in response to Intel's July 23rd Conroe ship date.

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Not free?

By gersson on 6/25/2006 1:51:11 PM , Rating: 2

Oh man, I was exited till I saw the price...

If it's good enough I might still get it, though.

Kinda cool to use the net while laying down on me bed. Another way to be @ anandtech forums ;-)

RE: Not free?

By phaxmohdem on 6/25/2006 2:07:08 PM , Rating: 2

Might be a good time waster, but what is the resolution on a DS? I can't even comfortably surf the web on my Dell Axim x50v @ 640x480. I can't imagine what it would look like on one of the DS screens.

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RE: Not free?

By Xavian on 6/25/2006 6:39:43 PM , Rating: 2

The whole page is displayed on one of the screens and the other screen displays a zoomed up version, using the touch screen to select parts of the page you want to see close up.

From the early reviews i've seen (of the Japan version) it seems pretty intuitive and comfortable, supports javascript and possibly more. I has to be noted that you get two cartridges with the Opera browser, one extends the amount of RAM for the DS to speed up the browser speed quite drastically and the other for the opera browser itself plus some extra storage space for cached items and such.

It is pricey, but atleast with the DS you get a choice of weither to use it or not (rather then the PSP that includes an incredibly bad browser with no means of changing it, plus get charged extra for the "feature").

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RE: Not free?

By rollo1337 on 6/26/2006 12:04:30 AM , Rating: 2

I agree that the browser on the PSP isnt all that great, but it is 100% free....

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By phatboye on 6/25/2006 1:37:09 PM , Rating: 2

Wii handheld gaming device?

RE: ?

By Trisped on 6/26/2006 2:15:36 PM , Rating: 2

No, for the DS. The Wii is a console.

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How about WPA support?

By vanka on 6/26/2006 2:58:53 PM , Rating: 2

I'm still waiting for WPA support for the DS and it will probably come right after hell freezes over. I mean how hard was it to add the WPA software? I'm relatively sure that it wasn't a hardware issue as most, if not all, wireless chipsets have WPA support these days. So I probably won't be buying their browser because I don't want to use WEP on my wlan.

RE: How about WPA support?

By MercenaryForHire on 6/26/2006 5:01:17 PM , Rating: 1

quote:
I'm still waiting for WPA support for the DS and it will probably come right after hell freezes over. I mean how hard was it to add the WPA software? I'm relatively sure that it wasn't a hardware issue as most, if not all, wireless chipsets have WPA support these days. So I probably won't be buying their browser because I don't want to use WEP on my wlan.

IIRC, the DS hardware doesn't support WPA. I've heard conflicting reports and hearsay about it using some WPA-hybrid with the Nintendo WiFi USB dongle, but I haven't been able to confirm/deny anything.

Nintendo's official stance on that is "well, WEP is most common, so that's what we went with." I seriously hope that their networking/engineering team put up a long and drawn-out battle on this, because WEP is trivially easy to crack.

Now that both myself and my fiancée own a DS, I'm in a similar situation as far as "enable online play without compromising my network." I opted for the geeky approach of setting up a second AP and using my core router to isolate it from my internal network, throttled to as slow as possible (but queued for low latency), low broadcast strength, and shutting it off when not in use. Works well enough for me, and if anyone really wants to leech the ~5kb/s of bandwidth from right outside my front door ... well, I'll just step outside with a bat. :P

- M4H

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"Game reviewers fought each other to write the most glowing coverage possible for the powerhouse Sony, MS systems. Reviewers flipped coins to see who would review the Nintendo Wii. The losers got stuck with the job." -- Andy Marken