Not to make this blog be “All-Vista-All-The-Time”, but I wanted to chime in about some issues that have surfaced around running Second Life on Vista systems.
I first heard that there might be a problem when the Second Life Insider reported that one of their readers received video card error messages when trying to run Second Life after installing Vista. It appears that some people can run SL on Vista just fine, but some cannot. Further digging into the topic indicates that success depends on your video card and whether or not it supports OpenGL. If you are a Second Life resident moving to Vista, you may want to look into updating the drivers for your video card.
Systems Dell ships today with Vista and nVidia graphics solutions have the native 3D rendering support required for Second Life. Including the XPS 710 desktops and XPS 1710 notebooks that you can configure within Second Life for purchase in real life. ATI’s OpenGL ICD has just recently been made available, so while it may not be shipping installed on Dell systems today, we have added the ATI drivers with OpenGL ICD support to our Drivers & Downloads site.
Now it appears that help is on the way from Linden Lab, as well. Steve Linden blogs that changes coming with the First Look Viewer will enable Linden to debug problems with running Second Life under Windows Vista. No exact ETA on that, but it’s reassuring to know they’re working on it.
Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles.
From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life.
Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.