I have been using the latest free version of Opera, and yes, Microsoft's site is hostile to it, but no, they cannot prevent you from using their site. If you have trouble accessing one of their pages through all the wierd shortcuts they use there (I think it's javascript) all you have to do is go to google and type in exactly what you want. Even with IE5.5 I was doing this anyway because their site is just so hard to navigate. Microsoft's advertising policy automatically makes their sites come up on the top of the list at google if any of their pages match your query. I hope this will convince someone else to make the switch...