Well, MyIE2 would be a better option to IE. But not for Opera 8)
Where performance(or speed) is the issue there is only one browser & its Opera!
At some time of my browsing,
I have opened
40 windows(web pages) in Opera simultaniously!....
That too
WITHOUT CRASHING THE SYSTEM
Can you imagine this?
(My PC is P-II 350, 128MB RAM with 7200rpm drive)
IE would crash even if I open & close it for 40 times due to its wellknown bug, it doesn't frees all the resources after closing. It will easily show the 'System is running low on resources, please close one or two windows......' message if you are browsing very fastly, visiting many pages.
Have you ever bothered to check the thread priorities, processor usage & resource consumption of these browsers?
Opera manages all this smoothly than any other browser.
You can check out it with the 'Resource Meter' & 'System Monitor' in 'System Tools' or whatever tool u like!
Finally,
Opera wins
Rules the net
Masters use Opera.
Victims use IE