I'm Paying The Price For An Idiotic Decision

[Wiu Bing]

Hiya,

So my old Windows 7 laptop exploded a while back.  I promptly panic bought a new laptop.  With Windows 8.  'Surely it's not as bad as everyone makes out' I thought to myself.  I was wrong.  It was an idiotic decision that I've regretted ever since.  After updating it to Windows 8.1 I thought maybe things would be slightly better.  Sadly not, somehow my wireless and bluetooth cards weren't compatible and after hours of trying to fix it (Both myself and the Dell tech support), I rage quit and did a full reinstall back to Windows 8.  After it completed that, I promptly reboxed it and haven't used it since.  Luckily I managed to fit a new hardrive in my old Windows 7 laptop so use that.

Anyway, my question is:

Are Linden Lab ever going to release an officially supported Windows 8 viewer?  Whilst my old Windows 7 laptop is working, it really does struggle to run SL.  I tried installing SL to the Windows 8 laptop when I first got it and whilst it did run, it was near unusable.  It just crashed all the time and the user interface seemed to flash with glorious colours which often made the chat dialogue unreadable.

Thanks,

Wiu

[Theresa Tennyson]

The flashing's a known problem with Intel graphics and WIndows 8. If you can download an updated driver directly from Intel that may fix it; if you're locked into Dell drivers the flashing will also stop if you turn off basic shaders.

I believe there's a more permanent fix somewhere in development from Linden Lab,and Firestorm may already have a fix as well.

[Wiu Bing]

Thanks for the reply Theresa.  It's actually an AMD 2 gig graphics card.  I guess I'll just have to unbox the new laptop again and have another go with it.  3rd party viewers scare me.  I've only ever used the official Linden one.  I miss viewer 1 and Windows XP!  

[Orca Flotta]

3rd party viewers scare me.  I've only ever used the official Linden one.  I miss viewer 1 and Windows XP!  **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyvery-happy:" title="Smiley Very Happy" />

Why are you scared of TPVs? There's no reason, absolutely none. FS is used by more residents than the official viewer. And for poor hardware like your lappies a viewer like Singularity may work wonders. No reason to miss V1 neither since Singularity co mes with V1 interface but still suppports all the new stuff. So you'll be able to see and wear mesh without the hassle of V3.

Here's another idea. If any Win gives you problems bin that chit and move on to Linux! Modern Linux systems like Mint 16, Ubuntu 13.10 and similar distros should run on your hardware with all drivers fresh out of the box. Hardware recognition these days is great.

[jwenting]

If your laptop has an Intel and AMD card (which my Dell has), use the AMD tools to force the machine to use the AMD card to run your SL viewer.

I did that and the flashing (and crashing) went away instantly. Performance also more than doubled.

[Wiu Bing]

Hiya Orca,

I'm an official kind of guy.  Third party viewers seemed a little pointless to me.  Plus I seem to remember 1 massively popular one being banned a few years back for basically stealing peoples personal info (I've forgotten exactly what happened, but remember it caused lots of drama).

That said, I will take your advice and look into a third party viewer when I find the time to have another go with Windows 8.  Thanks for your reply

[Wiu Bing]

Hiya jwenting,

This is interesting.  So you reckon that SL could of been running using the built in Intel chip and not the 2G AMD graphics card?

Thanks for the reply

[Orca Flotta]

I seem to remember 1 massively popular one being banned a few years back for basically stealing peoples personal info (I've forgotten exactly what happened, but remember it caused lots of drama).

Yes, it was the Emerald viewer. One of the developers obviously felt super smug, showing of (or rather, hiding) his hacking skills. So LL got rid of Emerald, the Emerald team got rid of the dev ... and out of the ashes rose the Phoenix, which turned into the darling viewer of over 60% of SL's population: Firefox. Well, FF are trying to emulate the old Phoenix GUI but somehow failing in that regard. That's why I and many other V1 afficionados are on Singularity these days.

 

 

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Orca Flotta wrote:

I seem to remember 1 massively popular one being banned a few years back for basically stealing peoples personal info (I've forgotten exactly what happened, but remember it caused lots of drama).

Yes, it was the Emerald viewer. One of the developers obviously felt super smug, showing of (or rather, hiding) his hacking skills. So LL got rid of Emerald, the Emerald team got rid of the dev ... and out of the ashes rose the Phoenix, which turned into the darling viewer of over 60% of SL's population:

Firefox

. Well, FF are trying to emulate the old Phoenix GUI but somehow failing in that regard. That's why I and many other V1 afficionados are on Singularity these days.

---

You mean Firestorm.  And Emerald wasn't used to steal people's information, it was used to launch a dos attack... big difference, though no less troubling.

...Dres

[Panther Miklos]

TPV's are my friend. lol   While my monster machine is out of commission, I'm on a tiny laptop.  Cheap little thing really. Win8 with I3 processor, 4G ram Dell.  It isn't ideal for SL (low graphics are my life right now), but I can get in world, run around and do most anything.  Sure, bit more of the lag situation than with my big machine but it's doable.  I'll never understand why end point sales are choosing to put win8 on any machine that isn't touch abled.  I had to switch to Singularity a while back when LordGregg didn't update Emergence to go along with all the do-dads.  I've not done much of anything to the machine itself, just use the integrated chip/card.  Haven't tried the official viewer in years.  Things went wonky on my end when I tried V2 for the first time.  Stayed with it a few days, but it just didn't agree with my dsl and setup and I've not gone back to official since.

So, if you really want to use that win8 system, give Singularity a try.  It works just fine for me.

[Prokofy Neva]

I've never understood why Linden Lab constantly gears their product to exotic hipsters and geeks who buy computer parts on New Egg and build them themselves, or else hugely expensive custom computers, instead of gearing it for the masses who have to buy at Best Buy.

Best Buy *only* has computers with Windows 8 now. You don't have a choice to get Windows 7 if your computer card finally burns out for the final time (after two years of running SL). You have to get Windows 8. And you don't have the time to fuss with how you could dial back to 7 because you have work to do, life has to go on, you are not a geek.

 

Why can't they just walk a mile in our shoes to Best Buy and make their product fit with Best Buy/

[RudolphFarquhar]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

I've never understood why Linden Lab constantly gears their product to exotic hipsters and geeks who buy computer parts on New Egg and build them themselves, or else hugely expensive custom computers, instead of gearing it for the masses who have to buy at Best Buy.

 

Best Buy *only* has computers with Windows 8 now. You don't have a choice to get Windows 7 if your computer card finally burns out for the final time (after two years of running SL). You have to get Windows 8. And you don't have the time to fuss with how you could dial back to 7 because you have work to do, life has to go on, you are not a geek.

 

Why can't they just walk a mile in our shoes to Best Buy and make their product fit with Best Buy/

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Because Microsoft don't ******* own LL.

Whatever the ******* idiot conspiracy theorists might believe.

**********Rudi**********