An Alternative to SecondLife

Now that's a catchy headline, isn't it? :-)

When I need a break from the SL buzz, many times I go to the Beta Grid instead. The kewl thing there is you almost have a world to yourself. Things usually rezz fast, not bumping into avatars at every corner and meeting people there is nice because most people don't expect anybody else there besides themselves -- it's a bit like meeting a fellow countryman in a far remote corner of the planet. I imagine that this must be what SL was like in the old days (long before I arrived) and in many respects it's what I think SL should be like.

We used to need to install a specific viewer to access the beta grid, but you can just go to the second Second Life (is that 3rd Life?) by adding --aditi to the command line. Make a copy of your Nicholaz icon, right-click, Properties, Shortcut and chage it to "C:\program files\secondlife\nicholaz.exe" --aditi

The Lindens used to reset the inventory every 24 hours but now (since the het grid) I'm carrying the same luggage for weeks now.

You will also get 5000L money when your inventory is created, which can be spent on items in the (few) shops there or which you can use to upload and tweak textures until you are satisfied with them. I'm designing a skin which takes many many turns until things look right and I've saved 1000s of Linden$ that way.

I often like the beta world better than going to the main grid.