Chimerix Alchemi

Second Life version 3.6.2.279258 OS X 10.8.4, iMac w/2 GB RAM, 2.4 GHz Intel COre 2 Duo, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB The Viewer launches and operates flawlessly for a random period of time, anywhere from 5 minutes to over an hour. At some point, it abruptly becomes non-responsive, and the spinning beach ball of death appears. However, the audio chat continues to function! I can hear others talking, hear streaming music, and if I have my mic turned on, I can continue to talk to other people. But the interface completely freezes. I don't see text chat (although I can hear the "beeps" telling me chats are appearing), I don't see the environment updating or people moving. I can't interact with the Viewer; it ignores both the mouse and the keyboard. The only way I can exit is to Force Quit. And, the funniest part, is that even after I do Force Quit successfully from the Viewer, the audio chat continues to function! The only thing I have noticed in way of causality is that I switch back and forth between SL and my web browser (usually Firefox), and that the freezes seem to coincide with switching from browsing to SL. Mahalo!

I may resort to the complete uninstall, but it's not so much a problem as an annoyance. If the auto-updater didn't bother telling me it had failed, I'd never be the wiser. I have noticed that, despite it failing, and despite me not feeling like downloading the latest version, I've been online regardless. I suppose eventually it will refuse to let me log in, and I'll have to take the time to DL the viewer and install it anew. Til then, meh. Just another lovely example of a foolproof system not taking me into account.

Am I the only one who has this experience? Ever since the launch of the version 2 viewer, the auto updater has not worked once. I consistently get a message that "The updater has experienced an error. Please download the latest viewer from..." message. What's the point of an auto updater that has not once, in... I;ve lost count, how many updates now since 2.0 became mandatory?... ever functioned properly. Mac, btw. OS 10.5.8. 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.