i ususally use opera mobile 9.5 build 15954, but i would probably use opera mobile 9.7b2 if it worked on my phone. Supposedly opera mobile 9.7 can accelerate browsing like opera mini does. In addition, there are different versions of opera mobile that have flash enabled but i doubt any of them are as good as skyfire at it. If you are running an old 6.1 rom then i think the flash video bundle will work with tcpmp but i havent tried that out in quite a while. Lastly i still do use opera mini for a few things like if i need a quick google or search, the built in opera link is nice and i really like opera mini's rss feed reader the best, for quick causal reading.
So i use Opera mobile 9.5/opera mini/skyfire in that order
if you want to find the version of opera that is right for you here is a good place to start
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=486502
the arthor of the thread is trying to get all available versions in a single place.
and the flash video bundle is
here
Lastly i have tried picsel and i liked it, it is not as good at text resizing and page layout as opera mobile but it was very smooth and easy to use, no flash though. If you want to try it, try and find a cab using google