How much slower does it open? Do you have any plugins enabled?
And how does it run after it opens?
I usually open my browser in the morning and keep it open till evening, so the start-up time isn't important for me. Having said that, Opera opens faster than Firefox for me, and about as quickly as Chrome. But, that may have something to do with Windows pre-caching the most used programs.
Once Opera's open, I find it's more responsive with a lot of tabs open than Chrome. If I've got about 10-20 tabs open, Chrome becomes unresponsive for a few seconds while switching tabs, but not Opera.
I like Opera's in built ad-blocker, and image blocker. The mail clients nice and light.
I used to use Windows Live Mail for 4 of my accounts, but it was really slow. I use Opera Mail for about 10 accounts now, and it's fast, and light.
I may be biased towards Opera since it's been my primary browser for about a decade now, but honestly, except for some standards support, I think it's far better than any of the other browsers out there.
