It speeds it up some. But remember opera is faster out of the box, and there are "tweaks" for it just like you posted for ff, so again, opera is faster.
Identify as opera and choose sign in anyway as the gmail option. I use opera 8 but i never had issues with 7.6 either. I think i was using 7.54 when i got my gmail, perhaps why i upgraded.
EDIT: Version 8 can be a little difficult to find since its in beta, its kinda buried on the site. So here it is off my server.
www.wacker7.com/FILES/Opera8beta.exe
