Opera VS Firefox

I was Mozilla Firefox candidate and my friend was on the side of Opera. He had been using Opera for quite a long time and he would never change that. We decided to test our claims. After arranging two PCs for the test, I opened Firefox at mine and he opened Opera at his PC. Plan was to open several websites again and again but at the same time at both PCs, one website at a time and see which browser loads the website faster.

I am a great fan of Firefox and have trust in my choice of browser. We selected a website and typed URL in browsers. At the same time we hit enter key. I was at the Firefox while my friend was at Opera. I was taken aback when Opera loaded the website page before Firefox could. Okay! I told my friend that it could be a coincidence. So we tried again. Same result. Opera showed up the page before Firefox and loaded the website with greater speed. We tried different websites after that, but to my surprise, Opera was leading every time and in case of every website. Even we hit enter for Firefox first and then for Opera, but Opera loaded the page faster then the Firefox. It was clear that Opera is way more faster then the Firefox.

Opera is Turbo charged, having new features and technology. Many people like Firefox and consider it to be the fastest browser for internet. But the case was different here. I have also noticed that Opera loads the images in slightly low quality at first load for better performance / speed and when you hit refresh button, it loads the high quality version of images. Firefox popularity is majorly due to the Plugins and Add-ons support.

What have been your experience for Firefox? Do you prefer Opera? If so why?