Peggy Paperdoll

I would be a little leary of the 525M graphics card though it probably will run SL mesh......you will take a pretty hefty preformance hit (mostly in the frames per second area making texture lag a potential issue). Talk to the retailer you are considering purchasing the computer from and see if they can upgrade that card to a GT550M. I would feel comfortable about mesh with that card. Like everything else laptop, that upgrade is going to be surprisingly expensive (way more than a comparable desktop graphics upgrade). To offset some of that cost increase you could opt for an i5 CPU instead of the i7......the i5 is overkill for SL and the i7 is even more (you won't see a performance hit what-so-ever and you can save a $100 plus). Also, a terrabyte of storage, unless you have 1,000's of pictures, videos, and music to save to the hard drive, is about twice what you would likely ever need. Computer manufacturers hype the huge storage to up the price of the computers. To make such a hard drive managable and efficient you will need to partition it into smaller areas (especially with it comes to the time it will take to defragment the drive.......something you should do as a normal preventative maintenance rituall on a regular basis). 500 gigs is a good size (even that is larger than the vast majority of users need).....to protect your pictures and videos and music it's best to save and archive those on removable media anyway). Going with a smaller hard drive will save you a few more dollars to put toward the graphics card upgrade. Don't forget a cooling pad. No matter what video card you get SL will heat up your laptop tremendously.........$30 to $40 dollars is cheap insurance.

They could suspend you.......but I doubt it. It's a little more likely that you may get a warning (but, even then, I doubt it). Now if you had actually spammed someone (or a group) by repeatedly giving out the LM's you probably should worry a little. But you say you did not, so I say don't worry about it. Giving a single LM to a single person (or even just a few people) is not, at all, unlike IM'ing someone without first asking if you can IM them......that is annoying too (I actually don't like that more than if someone passes me a LM......it's easier for me to decline the LM than to ignore an IM). It's not against the ToS and not AR'able to IM someone (unless, of course, it's a harassing IM). What you did could be viewed as some sort spamming though I don't think LL will think of it that way.......especially when they look at the logs about inventory transfered to the person reporting you (and, before they suspend or ban, they will review the logs).

I wouldn't worry too much about getting suspended. That is such a low level "violation" it will go to the huge pile of other AR's that people file all the time........and, no, LL does not have the time to sort through that junk (that's a big reason for the perception that many have about LL not following through with legitamate AR's.....having to deal with tripe like that). Giving out landmarks is not against the ToS except at Info Hubs (for the reason 16 pointed out)........it could be considered annoying and possiblly harrassment if it were a case of spamming using the LM's. But giving landmarks out is a popular way to promoting businesses in SL.

I scare my kitties too when they dump over the trash.

Seven Overdrive wrote: Storm Clarence wrote: Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Seven Overdrive wrote: But... but... I thought you were a chipmunk. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-surprised.gif" border="0" alt=":smileysurprised:" title="Smiley Surprised" /> /me scratches his head in confusion. Have you ever heard the term 'over thinking?' You ain't the only one... dats nuts. Meh.. was attempting to be funny. Guess I shouldn't quit my day job huh. I laughed too. I was just asking Qwal the same question. -------------------------------------------------- Y'all need to stop being such vultures.

"It's relatively few people that do this I think, and I think they do it because they need to take a jolly good sh1t (sluggish bowels can make people quite irritable)" ----------------------------------------------------- Excuse me while I make a quick run to the john. 

Actually, I'm being a "vulture" (by your definition).........and I'm enjoying it a little too.

You better not Storm.........I'll sue for slander. :smileylol:

"... *sigh* idk, i just wish it wasnt like that is all." ------------------------------------------------------ I just wish everyone voted Republican too.....it doesn't happen though. I live with it and do no complaining (at least publically). Maybe you need to do the same? People are individuals........they don't think the same and they don't act the same. Wouldn't the world be boring if they did?

Define "vulture" please. One speaking their mind and another not liking what was said is not being a "vulture". I could be defined as a vulture when I decide to jump in on some rant or whine or someone venting over nothing. That's why I want a definition.........so I can answer your question.

Your mouse freezing or acting irratic is a mouse problem. You might have just encountered a one time system glitch and never see the problem again (that is actually the most probable cause). But it if persists check for drivers for your mouse (though mice and keyboards work on the generic drivers all operating systems have, mice and keyboards that have special features require drivers for those features to work. If you don't use those features then simply uninstalling them to force the generic drivers to be used would fix a problem like that......but you won't have some features that are nice to have). If you are using a wireless mouse your batteries may need changing. If you are using a Blue Tooth mouse you might want to change the USB port your Blue Tooth transciever is plugged into. And, of course, your mouse may be failing........you'll have to replace it if that's the case.

" @ Peggy Paperdoll yes i done speedtest already. and its Download: 7.97Mbps Upload: 0.36Mbps and ping 11ms. My ISP works fine my internet package include low upload 380kbps. The most important thing about internet for games is PING thats why i don't use wireless even I have it. Well my speedtest for Dallas, San Francisko sucks ping 196ms Download 4Mbps upload: 340kbps. Ping is too high I am from Europe give me some Europe servers. Maybe thats part of problem i remember having problem with one MMO Black Prophecy only because i connected on USA server and not Europe when I changed game to Europe server everything started working perfectly. I cannot find SL server list so can you tell me where is SL europe server or how I could set it manualy to connect to it? yes DDR2 is not state of the art but I never seen MMO game that is optimised only for state of the art because than it woudn't been (MMO) Massive Multiplayer Online but only (MO) Multiplayer online because point is to enjoy as much ppl as possible. There can be many problems with software or hardware on pc that is slowing it down thats why I said that i have no problems with some other MMO or newer games." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Considering that you are in Europe your ping is not bad at all........there's nothing you can do about it anyway (except maybe move to the US and on the west coast....I'm joking, BTW). But it does introduce a delay in both sending and recieving information to the LL servers. Normally, thats not a big issue but there is going to be some noticable lag. It becomes a huge problem if there is any packet loss what-so-ever though. If you have a good ping (like double digits) your connection can handle a little bit of packet loss without problems.....say up to about 2%. Your ping is close to 200 and that packet loss will noticably degrade your performance......it may even cause you to lose the connection entirely. But there's only so much you can do about packet loss too......if it's in your network or hardware then you can fix it. If it's with your ISP then they can fix it. If it's in LL's network then LL can fix it. But if it's in the Internet backbone you'll just have to rely of the backbone maintenance folks to fix it (you can't notify them but your ISP can....a phone call to them would be order). There are no European servers farms for SL.....just the two at San Francisco and Dallas (there is a server farm in Phoenix, AZ but that's nothing to do with assets that the users need in world). I think I said that the upload is not terribly important for SL. Your upload is probably just fine. I only mentioned it because it looked very slow slow compared to your download......if thats what your ISP is charging you for and that's what you are getting, then that's great. The upload should be fine.........but, again, the latency is a factor and if any packet loss is involved it's going to possibly be a major issue. Your CPU clock speed is not a factor at all. Any CPU with a speed of about 1.5 MHz or faster is more than enough for SL. I'm sure benchmarks will be better with a faster CPU over slower one........but you won't see the difference (CPU speed for SL is a red herring.....a decent, modern CPU will run SL with litte effort). But your system RAM is very important..........next to graphics it's about the most important. You said you are running 4 gigs of RAM. But you are running that 4 gigs of RAM on a 32 bit system........and a 32 bit system can only recognize (meaning use) about 3.5 under ideal setup conditions. Most 32 bit systems will only recognize about 3 gigs (you're throwing away a gig of RAM because your system cannot and will not use any more that it can recognize). Then there's that speed of your RAM. Being slow your really don't realize the benefits of 3 gigs of RAM as opposed to faster RAM. System RAM improves system performance across the board.......not just for SL. The more system RAM you have the better your system will run everything........and, for high demand programs like SL, it's a significant improvement. Don't forget that any video RAM your graphics is lacking your system RAM has to make up the difference. More RAM and faster RAM will help any system.......and you will see a big performance increase if you changed from DDR2 333MHz to DDR3 1333 MHz (you'll think you got a new computer). Only issue may be is that your motherboard has to support DDR3 and the bus speed. And finally. Your comparison to MMO's is so far off base it's laughable. Graphics are graphics no matter how your GPU gets the information. It will process the graphics the same. Your online games are housed on your computer.....very little of the information for your graphics card to process comes from anywhere except your local hard drive. It's there for the snatching and rendering as needed. All the items, objects, and textures are right there on that drive. A fairly low end machine will have little difficulty producing a good graphical picture for you to play with. Now for the difference......and it's a huge difference and very significant. Nothing about the SL world is housed on your computer (I'm not counting caches which are temporarily stored on your hard drive). Everything you see and experience in SL is first requested by your viewer (that involves the upload speed you tested), then the LL servers find whatever it is your viewer requested and sends ti back to your viewer so that your CPU and GPU can make the requested items appear on your monitor. That's a ton of information being sent to your computer......and your system has to process every bit of it for you to see it. Those items, objects and textures in SL are amateur made (user content......very few of the users are even aware of optimising textures, items, scripts, objects or anything else we all build and upload to SL). Your system works very hard to present the world to you......especially the graphical information. None of that happens in your online games.....it's all right there on your computer and your systems grabs it and processes it as it needs it. It's not avalancing in on it.....that's where system RAM plays an important role in your performance. You can't make the comparison......it's compariing a skate board to a motorcycle. They both have wheels..........and that's about the end of the similarities. There's little can do about the latency or packet loss (unless it's in your network). You can improve your RAM speed. You can improve your RAM recognition by going to a 64 bit operating system. And you can understand that SL is not an online game and not expect it to perform like one.......that helps in the frustration area.

I'm going to stick up for Ollj a little bit on this one. I just went through a 3 or 4 day bout of having difficulty signing into the Blogs/Answers/Forums. I could get to the site but when I went to "Sign In" I'd get a variety of errors (http 400, 405, and 500). I, at first thought, the web servers were hiccupping and really didn't worry about it much (that was the first day). I alao could not get to my SL dashboard.........I was actually thinking I may have gotten a ban from the forums since I could log into SL without any problems. But the not being able to get to my dashboard sort of threw a wrench in that ban idea of mine. On the second day this was happening I did finally manage to sign in to the forums........I was curious to see if others where having a problem too so I searched and looked back on the threads for a couple pages and there were no complaints. I chaulked it up to something weird with my ISP (or maybe my router since I had recently configured it so that my new smart TV could access Netflix and stuff). But then when I logged of the forums to go do something in RL and came back I was getting those same errors messages. Okay, I know it's not the website and that I'm not banned from the forums.........it's got to be my router or ISP. But before I dug into that I looked up the 400 error since it was the error I got most of the time. A 400 error says that your browser gets to the site but that there's a problem with the address.......that was weird since it only occurred when I tried to sign in after getting to the forum site. I Googled fixes for the 400 error and every fix said to reinstall your operating system. I'm not against doing that (I've done it a number of times) but I generally plan for such a task......it can take a day and a half (or more). I just wasn't up to it right now. So I just accepted it and kept trying knowing that eventually I would be able to sign in. Once signed it I just never closed the tab and did my other Internet stuff with the forums minimized. I found that once I was able to sign in to the forums my dashboard worked too. Then yesterday I was looking at my preferences in my browser (IE 9).....planning in the back of my head to reinstall my Windows 7. I noticed I had "In private" browsing enabled. I don't remember ever using In private.........I'm sure I did not intentionally enable it. I turned it off. Now for over a day and, at least, 20 sign outs, closing the forums, doing something else, then signing back in with no difficulty at all.........none. My dashboard works fine too. So, Ollj, check how you have your browser set.........it may just be something like I had for a few days. You won't find it unless you look.

The "highly doubt it" part of your first sentence is pretty much spot one. All sims are ultimately provided by Linden Lab. And LL charges real life money for each and every sim owned by anyone (other than the sims LL operates.....which is mainland sims). The price for a full sim is $295.00 (USD) per month and for homestead sims, I believe, is $195.00 per month..........but you must own, at least, one full sim to purchase a homestead sim. So, if you want to own a sim someone is going to have to pay LL either $295.00 or $195.00 per month. If you "purchase" a sim from someone other than LL then the real life money obligation to LL is transferred from the sellers name to your name and you must pay LL the real life money each month. If you rent the sim from someone they may take the SL currency (L$) for payment......but that amount will certainly equal, in L$, the real life dollar amount due each month to LL. About L$73,750 for a full sim and L$48,750 for a homestead sim. That's based on $1.00 USD equaling L$250. That's also not allowing any profit for the owner........and that is probably not going to happen. If you buy from LL you will be required to pay in real life money the equivalent of the monthly fee for the type of sim you purchase. You won't find "cheap" sims. You'll only find sims at the same price for everyone who owns a sim. Bargains are non-existant in SL.

I couple of things that are not helping: "Cable DL: 8MBps / UPL: 320kbps Ethernet connection" Your download is fine, but that upload is mighty low. For the most part a slow upload is not going to cause you much trouble but with a speed that low (less than a 1/2 meg) I suspect you might have some issue either with your ISP or your home network. With 8 down and .3 up something doesn't seem right.......I would expect something closer to 750 KBps upload with an 8MBps download. The other thing is your system memory speed at 333Mhz and DDR2. Not only is that slow but it's old memory (DDR2 was state of the art about 5 years ago......DDR 3 is now and it'a about to go "old school". Plus you are using a 32 bit operating system which is capable of only recognizing 3.5 gigs or memory at the absolute maximum......the real memory recognized is much closer to 3 gigs (and for some systems that's iffy). Do an indepentant speed test for what you are really getting instead of what your ISP advertises that you are getting at your subscribed speed. http://www.speedtest.net/ Do a couple tests at the recommended test site (the one selected by Speed Test) to see if you are close to the speed you are paying for.......if not call your ISP to find out why not. Then do 2 or 3 tests each to both San Francisco, CA and Dallas, TX and take the average of all four tests to get a good idea of what you can expect when in SL. In your viewer preferences go to the tab that shows your bandwidth for SL (it varies from viewer to viewer so I'm not even going to try to tell you which tab.........just search around). Set your bandwidth to about 75-80% of that average speed you tested.

I can see where someone would want to "hide" in SL. Reasons such as your busy, or you just want to explore in private, or maybe you are having some intimate moment. It's next to impossible with all the ways people can "find" your online status......I don't want to get into in the pros and cons. However, that ability does not exist if someone wants to find out if you are online or not. In a way it's actually a good thing in that if someone really needs to contact you they can (without wondering if you have IM's to email.......if you don't then you just have to wait until they log in and that can be days or weeks, even months. In another way, it's annoyinng because you get interrupted from whatever it is you want to do without others knowing or just wanting to chat. I found the best way to "show off line" is to be honest. You can put up an away message telling them that you are online but you just don't want to be bothered..........try again later. Or you can just tell all your friends when the IM them that you will answer if you want and are not busy or otherwise occupied.......otherwise, assume I don't want to be bothered. The later is the way I deal with it. I don't just tell everyone who's a friend of mine that but I do when they interrupt me........and almost everyone of my friends accept that and hold no hard feelings. If it's some stranger IMing me I simply ignore them.......it they persist, they get muted. You can't hide in SL so work with it and not against it.

Is that "my own land" land on a private estate or is it land that is on mainland. It makes a difference since, if it's on private estate land, the owner of the estate (or any of their disignatated representatives) can return items/objects to the owner of the items/objects....for any reason and without you authorizing them in any way. The estate owner has 100% control over his/her land and everything on it. Contact the estate owner.

... Not if the market is over inflated price wise to begin with which it is and probably closer to 75% price over inflated in reality. And 'undercutting' is basically allowing for competition which is in most cases very good for general market growth in RL and I don't see why it should be different in SL. Advocation for these artificially high prices in SL would be like advocating across the board collusionary monopolistic practices on a massive scale in an economy which most would recognize would be 'bad' for market growth activity." ---------------------------------------- They actually call that price fixing........and, in most cases, it's illegal. The rest of your post I agree with.

*Disclaimer.......I'm no laptop fan ---------------------------------------- All the laptops you listed use intergrated graphics....either intergrated into the CPU (the Intel HD) or intergrated into the motherboard of the comptuer. They all will probably work with SL at low to, possibly, med settings on the graphics. But, I would not tell you that any would work at all........the graphics are weak in each of the computers you listed. The CPU speed is relatively unimportant.....SL requires a decent CPU but it certainly does not require a very fast one (all modern CPU's will handle SL just fine). At the price range you seem to be stuck at you will not find a laptop that has a discrete (or dedicated) graphics processor.......and highly doubtful that any laptop you purchase at that price range will even have a slot in it to add a discrete card at a later time (you need to be in the $1500 range or above for something like that). Personally (if someone held a gun to my head) I'd go with the HP.

"plutocracy " ----------------------------------- Someone said that exact same word a few years ago when the McCain-Finegold campaign finance bill was declared unconstitutional and the law was overturned. A rather heated discussion was started (mostly by me when I challenged the person on that statement). It was fun for me but I'm pretty sure the other poster wasn't having much fun. You wouldn't happen to be that person I was discussing the law with? I mine I know the meaning of "plutocracy"........but it's really not an everyday word people use. I've maybe seen that word used since the "discussion" twice.........and that was reading some potitical blog (probably something similar to the Huffington Post). If so........it's good to see back after all these years. :smileyvery-happy:

Here's something to consider. The photo of the avatar in question may not be you (or yours). If you purchased a "complete avatar" or a skin that also came with a shape, you are going to look like everyone else wearing that complete avatar or the skin and shape combo. Hair can be bought and I've seen many avatars wearing the exact same hair as I wear (or have in my inventory). There are also starter avatars in your inventory that everyone who signs up to SL has......if you are wearing one of those then, a lot of others are likely to wearing the same avatar. All of those possibilities will look exactly like you. There's one other possiblity that happens a lot too.......the avatar is the same skin as you have but the shape is just a little different (but close enough to look the same). I've seen avatars that have shapes very similar to mine and I made mine myself so I'm pretty sure it is different in some way or another. I also make my own skins and I've seen avatars that have skins very similar to mine.......again, I'm pretty sure it's different but just looks the same. File a support ticket and see what happens.........my bet is nothing. And the reasons are what I just stated.

I only used Walmart and their competitive pricing (which is probably somewhat aggressive......or so it seems anyway) as an example to counter the comments about "not undercutting competition's prices). No one on the planet can deny Walmart is a very successful business. And Walmart became as successful as they are with their business model. Walmart competes aggressively for customers and that puts their competitors in a box.......either compete on Walmart's terms (prices vs value) or carve out your own niche where you can compete on your own terms (or terms you care to accept). Yeah, Walmart is a retailer (meaning they are not the creators of the products they sell)......they don't compete with creators (manufacturers). Walmart chose the market they wanted to compete in. Sam Walton learned what it took to "win" the market he wanted......in other words he researched, he found a way to get an edge up, he did not complain about the competitors in his market (Walgreens, K-Mart, and others). He jumped in and competited.......and it took a lot of hard work, persistance and patience. The competition in SL is not any different.......the way to succeed is exactly the same. You learn your market (and learn it well), you research your market and your competition, you find a way to get an edge and you go for it.......you work you butt off and remain in the game. Rules and regulations in the real world have to dealt with in real life and rules and regulations in SL have to be dealth with. If you want to succeed you will have to deal with it all......looking for an easy way is not going to help you in the least. Working hard is and if you are not willing to do that then you are destined for failure (or at best mediocroty). I don't know why you mentioned "there certainly are people who make money by selling a tone of low quality stuff for low prices" The implication is that Walmart only sells "low quality" products. Yeah, there are some low quality products in Walmart. But what about products like LG? Garmin? Levi Strauss? Wrangler? Apple? Vizio? Samsung? Nikon? And that's just one section on the Walmart website (the Father's Day gift section). I've also seen Liz Claybourn products in my Walmart. Micheline tires, Sony and many other, not considered "low quality" items. Buying into the hype that Walmart is a cheap, subpar discount store? Oh, and "We are more like artists than walmarts". Yes there are some "artists" in SL (perhaps you are one). But not everyone in SL is an "artist". Most are mechanics. They learn how to make something using the tools and templates provided (by real artists, by the way). That's not "art". That's learning how to use a tool to make something. Are most people in the real world poets because they know how tor write something? If we (as a group) start looking at ourselves as we really are and drop the romantic notion that we are something we are not and look at what we really are, then we all stand a better chance of succeeding. I create (and use in-world) most of my clothing, the skins I wear, my shape, the textures on everything I make, and even some of the animations I use......but I'm no artist. I'm a mechanic........and a darned good one too.

While I might agree that setting your price for an item at half the competition's price is not a particularly good thing to do. Actually that's nothing but an arbitrary price that probably does no one any good......it might surpress your competition but you don't get enough to sustain your business (besides the fact that people tend to be suspicious of sellers and/or products that sell for such a low price. Both in RL and in SL). But, "undercutting" your competition is a successful strategy. Walmart (if not the largest retailer in the world, it's in the top 2 or 3) got that way by doing exactly that.......they undercut their competition for the same products. They've all but put K-Mart out of business by their aggressive pricing. They do not sell their mechandise at half price, they sell their products at a lower price by a fews dollars (or cents). For instance, if something sells for 20 dollars at K-Mart, Wal Mart sells the same item at 18 dollars. Sam Walton started out with a single store in Batesville, AR with a business plan to sell products at the lowest possible price that allowed his store to stay open and feed his family. He grew the store slowly and begain expanding to what the company is today..........he researched his competition and consistantly undercut their prices, stealing his competition's customers. You can say what you want about Wal Mart's business strategy but you cannot deny the success of the company. He didn't sell his products at the same price as his competitors. He took a lower profit (sometimes to the point of a loss after he had enough capital to absorb the loss). And now Mart Mart is so large in the retail business that they actually force the wholesalers they buy from to lower their prices. That strategy has a trickle up quality........and that benefits everyone. There's not reason an SL business cannot do the same thing.....but it ain't going to happen overnight. And it ain't going to be easy. You have to do your homework......know your competition and know your customers.

Sounds good to me........plus a big ol' slice (or two) of a vine ripened (I mean picked after it turned bright red) tomatoe. I was just outside checking my beefsteak tomatoe plants.........did you know those things grow more at night than during the day?

Red maples and aspen trees have the prettiest autumn colors.........but I really don't think those leaves would taste very good in my salad. Pumpkin might be good (I don't know). But if there's a spider in my salad it's in the trash.......after a healthy dose of insect spray!!! The rest are just candy.......and I'm not very big on candy (unless it's a Payday bar ).