Novel Idea for a Laptop Upgrade

A significant number of people in the forum ask how to run Second Life™ on a laptop that has ample memory and CPU power but lacks adequate GPU power. The answer is disappointing, your hardware is not gonna cut it.

Now I find there is a way to add a PCI graphics card to a laptop. It isn’t pretty but, apparently it works.

Check this out: EXP GDC Laptop External PCI-E Graphics Card. You could add a GTX980 to a 4 year old laptop.

I am not endorsing the product. You are on our own deciding if this is for you. I am just pointing out a possibility.

Second Life News 2014-43 #2

This Friday was the Third Party Developer’s Meeting. Oz Linden and other Lindens spoke for about 26 minutes telling us what was coming and where things are in the release pipeline.

Don't Panic 2014
Don’t Panic 2014

Viewer

Today the main viewer remains 3.7.18-295539.

RC Viewers

Friday saw the Lindens putting out a new Benchmark and HTTP RC Viewers.

Benchmark Viewer version 3.7.19.295759 – This is the viewer that does away with the GPU Table. Note, Today (10/25) the Alternate Viewers page is showing this as a new RC and an older version as a Project Viewer. Get the newer one. It has all the updates from the default viewer.

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Second Life Notes

I am suddenly swamped with RL things to do. So, not much time for a post. However, a couple of notes…

WARNING: Flashlight Apps

Word is going around about a flashlight apps on smart phones. Seems the ten most downloaded flashlight apps are all spyware. A company named Snoopwall has published a report on these apps and named names. See: Snoopwall (Android App) and get their free app.

Battle for VR

Gwyneth Llewelyn, a writer I enjoy reading, has posted: The battle for the future virtual world environment is on! It is a good analysis of the current VR competition.

She points out an interesting statistic. Goods sales at the peak of the SL Hype Days (2007-9) was in the range of a few million dollars (US) per year. Now goods sales are around 500 million, half a billion. That is growth.

Gwyn sees the VR and virtual world products as only serving a niche market with a small number of users. That is accurate today. But, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to make their new VR products relevant to the masses. Facebook and Google are pouring hundreds of millions into development of VR products. While the dreamers like Zuckerberg, Rosedale, Lucky, and others might just jump and spend money, multi-billion dollar companies tend to analyze market potential and size their investment to the potential return.

Check out Gwyn’s article. See what you think.