Oslo, Norway Jan. 18, 2005
Within hours of announcing the free Opera site license for higher education institutions, hundreds of schools responded, eager for a safer Internet browsing alternative. Though only a few days have passed since the announcement, more than 500 universities and colleges are on the way to deploying the Opera browser on school-owned computers.
Opera has offered free site licenses to primary and secondary schools, Web design schools and organizations for the physically disabled since 2002. Until now, higher education schools were subject to fees for an ad-free version of the browser. Now all schools receive the ad-free version free of charge on any school-owned machine.
With interest pouring in from a wide variety of schools including Georgia Institute of Technolgy, Duke University and Bonn University in Germany, the following comments are representative of the numerous positive responses Opera has received:
– “I have been looking for a way to get us away from the dreaded Internet Explorer. I would like to give the full-featured Opera a try.” -Coffeyville Community College, Kansas
– “Already the old $1,000 license was interesting, but I forgot about it. Now it’s free. We’re lucky!” – Johannes Gutenberg-University, Germany
Though there are other free browsers on the market, Opera delivers additional value to schools by offering direct communication with an Opera representative and optional support services. Opera also provides schools with free upgrades, which will include the new, yet-to-be-named version of Opera to be released in early 2005. Additional features such as tabbed browsing, sessions, notes, RSS feeds, chat functions, pop-up blocking, easy customization and an e-mail client are integrated in the browser, eliminating the need to download additional features as extensions.
“We are happy to provide students everywhere with more security while surfing the Internet,” says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “The response we received is overwhelming, which proved there was an obvious need in the student community that had to be met.”
“Universities have good reason to be concerned about security because younger Web surfers don’t necessarily have the best habits,” Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox told the E-Commerce Times, in response to Opera’s new offer.
Interested schools should visit http://www.opera.com/education to set up an account for their schools. Once the information is verified, Opera will reply by e-mail with a username and password. With this information, access to the school account is granted and from there, licenses can be selected.
Contact:
Berit Hanson
Public Relations Specialist
Opera Software
www.opera.com
E-mail: press04@opera.com
Tel: +47 24 16 42 14
Fax: +47 24 16 40 01