PC-Second LIfe compatibility

[Ashimi Moonites]

I am looking to pick up a netbook or laptop - but want to make sure that Second Life can run on it before doing so.  Can anyone tell me if a  Dell Inspiron Dou netbook/laptop with Intel NM10 Express video card run second life?

 

If not, do you have any recommendations as to what will?

 

 

[Ashimi Moonites]

I am looking to pick up a netbook or laptop - but want to make sure that Second Life can run on it before doing so.  Can anyone tell me if a  Dell Inspiron Dou netbook/laptop with Intel NM10 Express video card run second life?

 

If not, do you have any recommendations as to what will?

 

 

[Baloo Uriza]

Not sure about that laptop since you didn't post specs, but pretty much any Lenovo ThinkPad with discreet graphics should do it.  Netbooks are right out, they're more oriented to people who need long battery life, extremely compact size and more or less smartphone functionality (word processing, maybe a spreadsheet, email, web).

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

Hello Ashimi and welcome to SL Forums. Without knowing its specs really we can't answer. My suggestion is to check out the following link, if you haven't already, about SL System Requirements.

https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/

My second suggestion is to test (try) the netbook before you buy. Go at the store (in real) and ask an employee there to allow you to download SL in a similar or the same netbook. That's what i did before to buy my new laptop. Only this way you can be sure about.

Personally i would never use for SL a monitor 10'' with 1366*768 resolution screen.

[Claireschen Hesten]

if it's a netbook (not laptop) and it's got intel graphics you will struggle to run SL from my own personal experience intel graphics in laptops can't manage better than the lowest graphics setting Baloo's suggestion to get a thinkpad isn't a bad one i used to run SL on an IBM thinkpad which i discovered could have it's graphics card upgraded which is not normal for laptops. if money is no object look in to getting a gaming laptop like an Alienware 

[Baloo Uriza]

Though, honestly, if it can run SL acceptably, it's probably not actually a netbook, no matter what the marketing idiots say.

[Baloo Uriza]

Yes, IBM Lenovo has been very consistent in making sure their laptops are relatively futureproof compared to the competition. The big reason being business doesn't want to throw away perfectly servicable hardware until it just doesn't do what they need it to do anymore, with cosmetic appeal taking a back seat. Which is why even going back, ThinkPads have generally been relatively user servicable and have had more or less the same case design for 30 years now. Also, good luck finding a laptop with a better pointing stick or touchpad. About the only other laptops that come close to getting my endorsement are the MacBooks, but if you get those, buy a mouse, too, because they're absolutely crippled by having no middle or right mouse buttons on the touchpad, inconvenient touchpad placement on the palmrest and a complete lack of a pointing stick.

BTW, if you've never used a pointing stick before, disable the touchpad and try it for a few weeks. You'll wonder what you were doing without it all your computing life. My current ThinkPad is the first ThinkPad I've ever owned that had a touchpad, mostly because I couldn't get this model without one (and I even called them and asked if I could get it customized with only a stick and no pad, and the pad's been disabled since the third day I've had it because I kept moving the pointer or clicking with my palms while typing).

[Faubio Alter]

It is not suggested to use a laptop with SL. They are not powerful enough, unless you have a very expensive gaming laptop ($3,000.00 US or more). Most laptops do not have graphic cards, another very useful piece of hardware when using SL. In general for most purposes laptops are "low end" machines.

[Baloo Uriza]

Oooh, I don't know about that. I bought my current Lenovo ThinkPad T400 in 2007 and it's still plenty SL-capable at about the same framerates as when it was new now. Not sure what V2, V3, Phoenix and Firestorm are doing wrong that Imprudence is doing right. If anything, I've experienced a gain in framerate with Linux 3.0 and the Radeon drivers released this week (15 fps in a heavily-crowded Ahern Welcome Area) versus what I had on Linux 2.8 and older Radeon driver iterations (10). Anything more than about 7 FPS is usable in SL for driving a reasonably scripted vehicle, which to date, is about the most reaction-time intensive thing I'm aware of that most people are likely to do in SL.  I get no statistically significant (or humanly noticable) impact from runing Imprudence at the same time as watching a Hulu video or an Ogg Theora video (and Theora seems to be particularly intensive).

It's not like you need the latest and greatest here, given that the servers are capped at 45 FPS; if your configuration is able to deliver anything greater than that, it's overkill.