Frank tried Opera 7.10 and found it wanting, too. I have now also moved back down to 7.03, and I’m much happier with it.
I’m quite disappointed about that. I started using Opera when it was still at version 5, and every version since then has been a step forward, adding at least some feature or bug fix that improved my browsing experience. I hope that 7.10 is an anomaly, and that 7.11 will patch things up again.