I used to kind of like Opera, but the last few versions really pissed me off by taking away any semi computer literate persons choice to stop auto updating.
I hate automated updating too. But I still use Opera.
In the Opera folder, I replaced the files needed for updating with non-functioning versions.
Opera_crashreporter.EXE
Opera_AutoUpdate.Version
Opera_AutoUpdate.Licenses
Opera_AutoUpdate.EXE
Then I set these files to Read-Only using the ATTRIB command.
ATTRIB +R FileName
With early versions of Opera, simply copying NUL to the updating files worked, but this won't work for recent versions because they check the programs' exit code. This made it necessary to find an .EXE file that does nothing except issue a "Normal" exit code. (ErrorLevel set to zero)
Now, whenever Opera updates itself, it executes an empty file and does nothing.
Cheers, PW.