Opera's speed dial lets you pick the pages and this could be a better approach. The goal of 'new tab' page is to present a list of pages you are likely to visit, but I'm not sure that it's actually useful.
Unlike the similar feature from Google Chrome, you can disable the page and you can remove the thumbnails you don't like. When you open a new tab, the page shows 9 thumbnails of the most frequently visited pages, recent bookmarks and pages from recently closed tabs. The latest update of Google Toolbar 5 for Firefox added the 'new tab' page from Chrome.