Preference Settings

Are these settings account specific or computer specific?

In other words, if I change the settings on my laptop to improve it's performance, will those settings also change when I log onto my desktop with the same account?

And/or if they are computer specific settings, will they be the same for any account that logs on using that computer?

And lastly, does anyone know where to find a guide to change these settings to optimize a computer?

It's computer specific and it does affect any account that logs in from that computer

I'm not sure about a guide though, sorry. Support Portal has a lot of stuff, I'd give it a try.

Go to the EDIT pull down menu at the top of your screen and click "Preferences"it's towards the bottom).

1. On the general tab you can if you want click show temporarily on show avatar names, in large crowds the names can actually become a problem.

2. Click on the network tab,
(a)make sure your network bandwidth is set lower than your maximum upload speed to your ISP . If you don't know what your max upload speed is choose a happy medium of around 550-650.
(b)Set your Disk Cache Size to 500 or 1000 Megabytes. (1000 is better for slower connections or if you dont have a great graphics card... you will rez faster, but this will take up more memory)

3. Click the "Graphics" tab
(a)Display resolution is your choice, but you will obviously gain the most performance the smaller it is
(b)You will get the best performance from being in full screen mode as well.
(c)set your "Draw Distance" to 64 (THIS IS IMPORTANT)

4. Click the "Graphics Detail" tab
(a)UNcheck the top two boxes
(b)Avatar rendering should be set to Normal for best performance
(c)Lighting Detail (IMPORTANT) Should be set to Sun and Moon only for
maximum performance - (though see if you can get away with 'local lights' checked, as it does make things look sexier!)
(d)Terrain Detail set to Low

THE DETAIL SLIDERS - THE FURTHER LEFT THEY ARE THE BETTER.
(1)Object Mesh Detail - set to LESS than 1/3 from the left
(2)Flexible mesh Detail - set to LESS than 1/3 from the left
(3)Tree Mesh Detail ALL THE WAY LEFT (no trees in the club)
(4)Avatar Mesh Detail - set to LESS than 1/3 from the left
Obviously the lower you go the better with these.

5. Advanced Graphics Tab
(1) Uncheck Anisotropic filtering
(2)Check Agp if you have an AGP card
(3)Set your Video Memory to the recommended or maximum setting
(4)set "Fog Distance Ratio" to 2.0 or less (i fine 1 is the best)
(5)set "Maximum Particle Count" to less than 1000(zero if you have a real old pc, or no 3d card) (zero really helps stop you crashing i have ffound )
(6)set "Outfit Composite" to 5 or less( zero works too)

6..Recommended but not absoulutely necessary... Go back to the "Network" tab and click clear cache

7.Hit "Apply" or "OK", and relog if you cleared cache or it makes you.
ONE LAST THING, YOU CAN HIT CONTROL ALT D, THIS WILL MAKE YOUR HIDDEN CLIENT AND SERVER MENUS APPEAR.
IN THE CLIENT MENU YOU CAN TWEAK THE CLIENT IN JUST ABOUT ANY WAY YOU WANT. ONE TIP IS TO GO TO THE RENDERING - TYPES AND TURN OFF WHATEVER YOU DONT REALLY NEED, LIKE CLOUDS, OR GRASS, OR WATER. *** ALSO IN THE RENDERING PORTION CLICK USE VBO, IT MAY OR MAY NOT IMPROVE PERFORMANCE DRAMATICALLY.

There are also settings changes you can make in your graphics adapter's control panel, typically choosing performance, or the option that DOESN'T provide best image quality is what you want to do.
Remember Second Life is OPENGL so you don't need to worry about Direct3d settings.

the above my the guide i hand out in world... it has reduced the crashed on my shitty laptop by more than 1/2

optimizing SL can be tricky busines, and largely depends on your specifc specs for your computer, and mostly your video card on that machine. the simplest recomendation is to start with the lowest setting then tweak upwards for the things that matter to you most, first, untill you hit the limit of slowdown you're comfortable with.

Optimizing your computer in general is such a broad topic that even guides for specific tweaks would take more than a single post, but a general outline would be...

close out all programs that run in the background but aren't being used (themes, window effects, autorun programs, unused services) a few things that help with this are msconfig.exe, services.msc (there's a guide for this by Blkviper, search the net), tweakui, and the ctrl+alt+del 'running tasks' menu.

clean up your hard drive(s), defragment, remove spyware (Ad-Aware is good for this), partition and use drives for specific purposes, and manually specifying your page file size.

in essence, run the least amount possible, on the cleanest set up possible. it's why this old 700mhz still runs faster than many 2-3ghz machines.