Nine newbie questions...

Sorry to take this off topic but this makes no sense. Experienced land dealers aren't going to pay over the odds are they?

Well we met Dyanna last night and brought her over to the Hangout. There was a lively crowd there. Taught her all about dance balls, LOL. Took her to Apollo, Rua, and SL Botanical Gardens, and introduced her to some guys that didn't hump her leg. Thanks for holding off on that, Trout. All in all, good times.

I got it from MadTV's Coach Hines, and if you use it I'll stab you in the neck!

In my first three days I probably spent roughly 3 total hours asleep with the rest in world. What about those questions do not sound like newbie questions? Had the same exact issues in the very beginning. It was hard to find anyone that wasn't also a newbie, people that hate newbies, males that want to hump your leg, etc. at the very beginning. Trying to figure out clothes at the beginning can be frustrating - finding other styles. The Friendship offer comes up immediately. Hard to figure out where to go in the beginning. Heck after 8 months it is still hard to figure where to go that isn't going to turn into cybersex type place or stores. One of the reasons I started down the "lets find real life places that have been depicted in SL" voyage, and the "here is a list of 21 finalists for the new world wonders, - let's see if they are in SL" voyage. Right that is 5-9 questions. Which question would a newbie not ask?

QFT

Wish I could have stayed and tagged along Not sure I've been to any of those places.

You just try it, Cabin Boy.

Right, but the auction page is full of strange stuff. Maybe it's possible to find a reasonable deal, but there's some bizarre neighbor-vs-neighbor bidding wars or something that's pushing up the prices for modest-sized parcels. Maybe something else is going on, too, but whatever it is, the Auctions haven't looked much like bargains to me, so far.

I run SL on the same laptop model you have. The video is about the lowest performance card that works with SL. The laptop fan runs almost constantly. Mine crashes, but not that often. I recommend upgrading to a better performance laptop with a newer Nvidea video card in it. I'm almost ready to buy a desktop computer with better performance.

As Oryx said, she did invite me to the Forum Cartel in-world last night and introduced me to some great people and beautiful places. So now I'm in a group, I'm having fun, and I've discovered that my avatar is a way better dancer than I am.

Riko - Thanks for the info, but upgrading is not financially feasible for me right now, and a desktop is certainly out of the question, because I need to take my laptop to classes. So my question is, can I remedy the problem (or at least minimize it) with a new graphics driver and a fan?

At least some of the crashes are due to temporary disconnections from the wireless network. (Nothing to be done about that at the moment.) So all in all, I don't think the computer itself is performing too badly.

Hi Dyanna and glad to hear you're having fun!

I'm no tech-expert, but as I've posted elsewhere, a friend of mine had a laptop that used to overheat very badly when running SL. It caused her a lot of crashing. She temporarily solved it with a container of ice cubes sat next to the laptop and eventually bought some sort of special laptop cooling thingy (note the very clear description ). It worked for her.

Happy dancing

Hi Dyanna - welcome to Second Life!!! There are a bunch of nice people who aren't necessarily pervs that do hang out a bit in Second Life. I've got a couple of answers for you to think over ... on the questions below. You got a lot of great answers from others.

On the place to live - I'd look into renting land for a couple of months - see how much time you would actually spend in your place before investing and buying. I understand the decorating thing - I bought land to build my own home too - BUT - instead of BUYING things - I build my home, and make my own furnishings in order to decorate the way that I like. Its hard finding things that are "my" taste in SL.

Building is a LOT of fun - I recommend you go to some building classes, and also visit the Ivory Prim Towers too - that's where I learned to build - you can learn at your own pace.

Making clothes - not hard if your patient I'm sure. I have no patience with texturing - so I've not really tried it but a few t-shirts. I like doing something and being done with it ... but if you want good clothes, you can't take shortcuts. There are body templates in the downloadable area, and also you can search in the forums/wiki also - for great tips/tutorials on making clothing (same with building too).

My yellow box thingee is borked, by the way, in my Windlight client - I have to switch back to the old client (non-windlight/first look) in order to find parcels that are for sale.

Yes - you can search for a business by its name - by the way. I do it under "all" I think. I'd have to take a look. You can also search groups under the "group" tab in the search area. Use the blue search button at the bottom of your second life client screen. I'm at work, so I can't give you specifics ... but there is a big world out there that you can search, including classifieds, people, groups, businesses, places, events ... just put in keywords in many cases, and you get a ton of stuff.

SL time is set to PST time, I believe - Pacific Standard - in the United States. In other words - the west coast.

And - you can set the time of day wherever you are - if you go to ... well, dangit, lol - there's a place you can go - at the top of your screen - and I can't remember the specific button - but, there is a place you can go to to change the time of day to noon, midnight, sunrise, sunset, etc. If someone owns a region, they can change the time of day - and keep it that way constantly ... like sunset - as it is done at Apollo (which, if you've not done, VISIT APOLLO!) ... Its a beautiful garden - and ... erm - is not pervy. You can search for it in the search tab under "places."

Hope to see you in world sometime - happy Second Lifing ...

Lelia

No prob. Any time you want me to hold off on humping someone's leg, you just let me know.

On the matter of time-of-day: The place to control the "look" is the last item in the "World" menu. It's "Force Sun". You can set the world on fire -- sunrise, noon, sunset or midnight. And it will stay that way until you change it, or re-set it to cycle through the 4-hour day/night sequence with locals. This is very useful when you want to get a good look at something and SL makes it dark night. It's also very useful to try different lighting when you want to take a snapshot.

The map: I think what you have been stumped by it the "island" area. Island regions do not show up unless the zoom slider is set to the top three positions on the right end (max zoom in).

To get a feel for the overall map. first check all the boxes in the key area in the upper right. Now set the zoom slider all the way to the left. You'll see the whole world in one map. Those several masses of dots, yellow pricetags, and what have you are "the mainland". (It's really several very large island "continents" All over the rest of the map are dots scattered in the blue sea. Those are the estate islands.

Center your view (grab and slide the map) on a largish cluster of those dots in the sea -- then push the zoom slider all the way to the right. You should now be looking close-up at one of the major estates. There's also lots of land available on the islands. They have several advantages. You don't have to be a premium member (saving $9,95 per month), you'll find all-residential areas with restrictions on the kind of undesirable building that makes the mainland such a jumble; there is often significant "protected" land as buffers between parcels; you can find places with double the allocation of prims for the same size parcel you would have on the mainland.

If you stick to the large estates, your investment will be as safe as on the mainland, and the cost will be comparable - or less.

You will find here in the forum major disagreement on the advisability of having land on the mainland or on one of the estates. Check out a good many places in each - just pick a sim at random, teleport in - and look around. Get a feel for what people are doing in each area, and find a place you can be comfortable with -- then start teleporting into some of those yellow squares to check them out for price, size and the covenants (if any) which will apply to building there.

When you start looking at parcels of land, it's a big help if you open the "View" menu and set "Land Owners" -- then when you teleport to the sim, the parcels that are for sale will be sandy yellow, while the "not for sale" land will be red. Just right-click on a parcel, and "About Land" on the resulting menu. Everything you need to know will then be available in several tabs of information.

But I agree with all the other advice -- take a lot of time before you buy anywhere. Meanwhile, grab that offer of a free month on a 1024 m2 parcel -- that's a winner, if there ever was one.