My laptop doesn't have a middle mouse button, and it's a modern Dell. Naturally I use a real mouse when I'm on a desk, but remember that not everyone has a middle mouse button.

Try clicking both right and left touchpad-button on your laptop. At most (all?) laptops it will open the link just as if you had middle-mouse-clicked it.

That works in X, but I've never seen that work in Windows. And when I have used it, the timing was only about 9/10; the other times I get a left-right click combo, or a right-middle combo, or something else equally disastrous considering how the X clipboard works.

I use Windows 7 and it works for me.

So do I. I just tried it. I get a left and a right click. So the menu shows up for a little while, then it follows the link anyway. Wherever the Emulate3Buttons setting is in Windows, it's not on for me. I open new tabs by right clicking then left clicking for a reason, and it's not because I don't know about the dozen other ways to open a tab.

I'm surprised nobody's suggested "hit tab until the link is highlighted, then hit the menu key" yet. There's another great workaround.

I know that's the standard, but it doesn't appear to work on this one (Studio XPS 16).