Bye Bye Second Life - You Crashed My Computer

I had to take Second Life off my computer. And just when my 9 year-old nephew, who has the geek gene that I lack, showed me how to get my avatar around Second Life's virtual world.

The enormous program's most recent update crashed my computer. Starting up was taking more than five minutes. The computer was re-starting itself. It was refusing to shut down. By now I know that when you have a problem you re-trace your steps: what did you add or change most recently? And the answer was Second Life. Until there's a way to get Second Life's virtual world without an enormous download, don't expect much marketing madness to go on over there.

Along comes Cyworld, the Korean virtual world import recently launched in the United States, that many observers think will give MySpace a run for its money.

My guess is that it's more likely to become a g-rated version of Second Life, and soon be the target of companies marketing to the lucrative pre-teen and young teen market.

As Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal pointed out, SK Telecom, the creators of Cyworld are also the creators of Helio, the mobile MySpace application. They seek nothing less than global domination. Stay tuned.

Hey BL,

Sent you a trackback for a post I wrote a few days ago. Second Life didn't crash my Dell, but I think the rendering of the graphics are terrible.

BTW - I checked my Dell battery to see if it would explode and it was not on the list. However, I was very NERVOUS using it on a plane...:-)

Eric

I'm sad that I followed a Google Weblink to find this blog entry. It sounds like your hard drive is full and needs defragging. SL takes up half a gig of space for caching textures. Did you try asking for help using the Live Help feature? Email or phone call customer support?

P.S. Having your 9 year old on either the main or teen grid violates the Terms of Service and have you considered what exposing such a young child to such a mature environment can do?

After you came in the third life, that one beyond reinstalling your system, throw your nephew into his second life. I had no problem with it.

dear friendly, my computer is neither full nor in need of defragging. no, i didn't contact customer service. i've been using computers for a lot of years. you install something and all of a sudden your computer freezes, burps, hisses, won't start or stop, then the first thing you do in uninstall that last thing you installed and see if the problems clear up. I uninstalled second life, and the computer was back to normal.

the problem started with the recent update of second life, which is not important enough in my first life for me to give it a chance to screw up my computer.

be assured that my nephew was not exposed to any mature areas of the environment. he simply showed me what the various terms meant on the dashboard. he plays computer games. i never have.

Eric: I didn't get your trackback. hmmmmm