[My first notebook purchase - Vaio S-series with Radeon(TM) HD 6630M 1GB]

Thanks everyone for your feedback :-)

I'll make sure to get a cooling pad then, from a first quick research they seem to be rather affordable and not that heavy!

What I particularly like about this specific Vaio is the way the extra "battery" attaches to the notebook's bottom, I haven't seen a similar solution for other notebooks. Also, I was allowed to take it outdoors for a minute and the display was still rather good, especially compared to other notebooks.

I know that SL drains power like crazy, which makes most of the notebooks I have looked at rather unusable for my purpose, many don't even come with a third of the Vaio's battery capacity. All in all it seemed to be the one covering most of what I have in mind, but like I said, this being my first one I'm always open to suggestions ;-)

One last question before I will probably order it this weekend - would it make sense to upgrade to the i7 processor instead of ordering the i5? It would cost an additional 100€ and I'm not sure if there would really be a noticeable difference?

Edit: I also like the option of switching between the built in Intel graphics card and the Radeon, this can help with reducing power usage when doing less graphics intense stuff.

 

[My first notebook purchase - Vaio S-series with Radeon(TM) HD 6630M 1GB]

So I'm currently trying to improve my quality of living, and with spring/summer approaching I have decided that I'd rather work outdoors than spending most of the time indoors - that's why I'm going to buy my first notebook ever;-)

I don't want the notebook to to replace my quite powerful desktop computer but it's rather intended as addition to it so that I can get on my new bicycle and find myself a nice spot outside to get some work done there.

My basic requirements are:

not too big / not too heavy / capable of running SL roughly 2 hours in a row without totally overheating / acceptable graphics performance/FTP rates (don't need SL's shinies for this purpose, basic shaders & low draw distance will be enough), and also very important long battery life.

A typical outdoors work day could look like this: 2 hours of SL, 2 hours general Internet stuff (Marketplace etc.), 2 hours GIMP (not going to buy a second Photoshop license) /Blender.

I've looked at a couple of notebooks and my favorite is a Sony Vaio from the S-Series - here are some of its specs:

 

Intel® CoreTM i5-2520M 2,50GHz

Windows® 7 Home Premium

500 GB Serial ATA (7200)

6 GB 1333MHz DDR3-SDRAM

13.3" Display 1366x768

AMD Radeon HD 6630M 1GB

WWAN

Extended Sheet Battery (power up to 15 hours)

 

Would this be enough to run SL ?

Also, I have noticed that on the Sony US-Site the AMD Radeon HD 6630M 1GB can only be ordered with a Intel® Core™ i7-2620M instead of the Intel® CoreTM i5-2520M 2,50GHz option in my country - does anyone know if there's a specific reason/advantage/disadvantage for this?

Also, I'm somewhat worried about the cooling capacities of such a slim/small notebook. As I have said before, I have no intention of running SL for more than 2 hours in a row, but I'm still worried that cooling capabilities might not be enough.

I'd appreciate any kind of feedback as this is my first notebook with literally no experience in regards of what to get.

Thanks a lot :-)

 

Edit: I couldn't find this specific graphics card here and don't know what to compare it with:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Typical_Frame_Rate_Performance_by_Graphics_Card/GPU

[Sales.. Dead.]

You're welcome, Zhoie! The turmoil has already resulted in a change of Community Standards but the creators of these systems are constantly looking for ways around it, so even though it's been a great step in the right direction it's not really resolved and it will take quite a bit of time for people to regain some trust - very unfortunate situation when considering the other problems like search, maturity filters and such and the very last thing the economy needed.

 

[Sales.. Dead.]

@Couldbe

I'm sure that the Marketplace changes won't be beneficial to sales when in comes to adult items, but I think there's more going on in addition, e.g..  Marketplace relevancy which has also changed not long ago and which doesn't help either.

My sales have been surprisingly good until about the third week of February and I've even had my very best sales day ever in February, then all of a sudden sales dropped majorly. Around the same time the alt scanning issue became known among a lot more people who had been previously unaware. 2 of my best customers who had bought from me for years even sent me a notecard, letting me know that they really like my new releases but won't buy anything in SL for as long as the issue isn't resolved, even though they knew I wasn't using one of these systems. Another long standing customer sent me a "good bye" IM, letting me know that this (the scanning issue) was the last straw that broke the camel's back and that he would move on to another virtual world. I'm sure there are a lot more people that are feeling the same way right now. If it stops being fun then people are not really willing to part with their money any longer, or at least they're holding back for now.

 

@Zhoie

There are / have been so called security systems with a "feature" that let people look up other people's alts. People felt / feel violated in regards of privacy, plus because of how these systems work they are highly unreliable and people were linked to accounts that didn't belong to them, which could easily ruin one's reputation. If you have a few hours to spare then the Jira about this problem might be a a good place to start and see what the issue is about:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-24746

 

Edit: Usually when I release one of my rather rare group gifts the store fills up nicely for days in a row, this time even that was totally different, I guess it only was a third of the usual visitors.

 

[Sales.. Dead.]

I don't have a single mature/adult item listed on the Marketplace and my sales are totally down as well, both on the Marketplace and in world - I made about the same 3-4 years ago when my stock was really, really small and I can say that the last 2-3 weeks have been the worst in years for me, by far.

Usually enhancements help to some extent with slow sales, but not this time.

I don't know if it's really related, but I do indeed see a connection with the recent turmoil regarding the various alt detection systems. While I've never used one of these systems myself I hear people talking about holding back from investing in new stuff / buying L$ - this whole mess obviously took away the fun for a lot of people once they realized what had been going on all this time.

My own spending habits always depend on how much I make, needless to say I've hardly spent any L$ myself recently apart from my tier for 2 sims. Plus I wasn't in a shopping mood because SL wasn't exactly fun in recent weeks.

Take away that "easygoing" SL feeling from people and they have less reasons to spend.

 

[My Beefs With SLM...]

I agree that the current relevancy search is terrible, but relevancy just based on revenue won't really work either - old products would always do better this way and new products would be buried easily due to obvious lack of revenue.

I don't know what magic formula was used back on Xstreet, but relevancy was so much more relevant back then. They must have used a mix of number of sales, total revenue, ratings..., and the outcome was rather good in most cases. Plus freebies / cheapies were automatically put in a separate category, now there's freebies everywhere.

My own sales are absolutely awful right now, they haven't been that low for a very long time. My prices are fair and already lower than they should be - and I simply refuse to play the "sell for close to nothing promo" game. This practice has been worrying me for quite some time and it only seems to be getting worse. Unfortunately merchants don't realize that they will kill the economy in the end this way, and it's already hurting. I'd rather make sure there's a stable future for SL than take part in the  "grab whatever I can within a month mentality ". Sadly there are more than enough merchants who fail to look at the bigger picture and the future of SL's economy.

The change in customer behavior is also obvious - this week alone I had two people begging for free items and one who asked for a discount - for items that aren't even 2 U$ and that took me about a week to finish. All these close to nothing items on the Marketplace really seem to blur customers understanding of the time, effort and expenses it takes to keep running a business, creating quality content and providing support.

The marketplace is only strengthening that kind of behavior, with all the cheap items taking up the top spots so easily.

A new relevancy filter is absolutely needed, I just think it has to consist of more than just revenue.

[Putting Payment Info On File - How? (without going premium)]

Very strange indeed ;-)

VAT ID shouldn't be an issue - most countries in Europe are subject to paying VAT on all USD transactions, like tier, land store purchases and such.

When you are self-employed and your income exceeds a given amount (varies from country to country - in my country it's 17500 Euro / year) you need to pay VAT for the total in addition to income tax (which you only don't have to pay if your total yearly income, no matter if self-employed or employed or a combination of both doesn't exceed roughly 8000 Euro / year).

So if your income from self-employment exceeds the given amount it will be a good idea to register your VAT ID because this way you can deduct VAT paid for business expenses like tier payments from your total VAT bill. LL introduced this sometime around mid 2007, so it's been in place for a while and shouldn't be the reason for me to not see a button to add payment info ;-)

Edit:

Thanks for the link, I hadn't found that earlier! I guess this line does explain it:

Quote: "For security reasons, payment information can only be stored or changed when a payment is being processed"

Edit 2:

So each time I want to update payment info now like updating an expired credit card I will have to buy L$? Who came up with this "brilliant" idea... Very interesting link, thanks again for finding it!

[Putting Payment Info On File - How? (without going premium)]

Thank you Kei - this is what it was like before and how I had done it previously, but there no longer was a possibility to just add payment info today under Billing Information. I'll upload 2 screenshots that I just took with this account (Clever Ghost), this is exaclty what it looked like earlier today, there no longer seems to be a way to simply add a credit card / paypal info.

[Putting Payment Info On File - How? (without going premium)]

Ok, here's a quick update to my former posts:

After having failed to add a payment method for inworld L$ purchases to an alt account (payment details couldn't be associated through the web interface even though I had added a payment method for web based L$ purchases which was troublesome enough), I tried again with viewer 2.x and I was given a clickable link that worked, but I had to buy L$ again for my payment method to be added to "Buying L$ in the viewer".

My alt's profile now says "Payment Info Used".

It seems that it's no longer possible to simply put payment info on file, which is actually all I had wanted, I needed none of the additional L$ that I had to purchase today.

In my opionion this clearly is a step backwards. Adding payment info should be an easy and intuitive process without having to try various things first just so you might be lucky and one of the countless buttons you click in the process might turn out to be the right one. I wonder how many people simply gave up and go the freebie route instead.

I will spare myself the trouble in the future ;-)

[Putting Payment Info On File - How? (without going premium)]

You getting a different comment than me made me try something else - instead of placing a limit buy order I placed a market buy order. This time I was taken to a page where I could enter CC info.

The buy order wasn't really completed though but instead it now shows the equivalent USD balance. I was able to associate the CC to "Buying L$ on the web" and "Increasing your US$ credit", but I can't associate it with "Buying L$ in the viewer". When trying to buy in the viewer my alt is still told that it doesn't have a payment method set, and the status in my alt's profile hasn't changed either (even though I know that this can take a bit).

Oh well, I'll just leave it at that but considering that most people don't seem to be happy with the current state of the SL economy it's rather strange that they would make it so difficult to easily buy a bit of spending money.

Edit: And to add more strangeness - when placing my L$ buy order the estimated amount was deducted from my trading limits balance again even though the order is already covered by my USD balance.  All this can't be good for retention numbers ;-)

[Putting Payment Info On File - How? (without going premium)]

Thanks Nyll, unfortunately that didn't work either.

When placing a L$2000 buy order (well within the stated trading limits) I was getting this:

"The cost will be charged from your account's US$ balance, which we've listed below"

Of course there is no US$ balance for that alt, but I continued anyway.

The next page gave me this error message:

"We are unable to complete your request.

• You can't buy L${$display_quantity}, your current USD balance is ${$display_buy_balance_sll}. Please click here if you wish to increase your USD balance.

When I clicked the link to increase my USD balance it told me I had to at least increase it by 25 USD which is something I simply don't need right now, so I didn't continue from there.

I remember when I first joined SL about 4 years ago it only took me a few minutes to put payment info on file, but this is just ridiculous. Making it so difficult for people to spend a few bucks first without going premium doesn't make sense to me at all ;-)

Well, I guess then I'll just leave that alt as is, I simply don't need more than one premium account right now!

[Putting Payment Info On File - How? (without going premium)]

I was going to put payment info on file for an alt of mine but after having clicked every possible link when logged into the SL website I'm about to give up, all I can chose is to go premium which I don't want to for that alt, I simply want to add payment info.

I then tried to purchase a few L$ from inworld, hoping it would take me to the correct page, but the link provided gives me a 404 error.

Can anyone provide me with a correct link? I've spent an hour trying to figure it out but I'm giving up now.

Thanks a lot!