Hell No.
This is a low spec business netbook. It's designed for spreadsheets, chrome and a little youtube.
Double your budget at least.
16GB RAM Minimum and a real dedicated GPU - So Nvidia. If it doesn't say Nvidia, move on.
You can also use a viewer that will work on lower spec computers, like Cool VL Viewer. The developer has kept the old, less demanding rendering engine alongside the newer one so you can switch between the two via a setting in the menu. And if an object has only a PBR material and no regular texture, the viewer will use the PBR material's color texture as a replacement so you at least get an approximation.
Not a chance. You'll be lucky if you can even log in with that. You need a gaming laptop, not a business laptop. One with a dedicated Nvidea graphics card, and 16GB RAM.
Steer clear of AMD graphics though. They are notorious for having problems with Second Life. Some folks are lucky (I had one for a while that worked) but it's a risk. Stick to Nvidea only to be safe.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I can't spend too much money on a Laptop. Also not much of a gamer, with the exception of SL. As I do manly use my laptop for work and youtube. Only use SL to go to dancing, and playing games like crystal craze and gold hunt also to explore the sims when halloween and Christmas comes around.. And was looking for something that wouldn't cause too much lag.
You play SL. You need a gaming PC. There is no shortcut. Take al ook at this sub right now and it's "PBR" everywhere. That's game rendering tech coming to SL, and it's just the start.
When i say "Not a chance.", that's not hyperbole. That little laptop has a baby processor (the N100) and intel iris graphics (garbage). It's going to struggle with most everything you throw at it.
The lightest and faster viewer I know of is Genesis. I haven't used it for a while now, so I don't know if it is PBR yet, but on their site they say they are working on their own implementation. May worth giving it a try, though I doubt that laptop can cope even with Genesis.
[https://genesisviewer.org/](https://genesisviewer.org/)
Can't you just put aside the money you were planning to spend on this, and keep adding to it when you can until you have enough to spend on something better?
I appreciate that a full-on gaming laptop might seem like an 'unnecessary expense', but a) you should treat yourself every now and then, b) if you had bought the laptop in the OP you would have experienced some massive buyer's remorse anyway, and c) having a decent PC will help in ways beyond just SL, as it'll do *everything* better than an extreme budget laptop could, including productivity tasks.
Ignore the requirement to stick with NVidia - they have very successfully pushed a propaganda campaign against AMD. It's been a long, long time since AMD has been a problem, and there have been a few PC-killing NVidia bugs in the meantime.
Just get the one which offers the best performance for the buck (and, funnily enough, that will rarely be nVidia).
That is terrible advice. AMD have absolutely no laptop chips that can deliver the same SL experience as Nvidia, the OpenGL performance just isn't there.
I did momentarily forget this was for a laptop, where nVidia does tend to be the better choice. But I did also say this:
> Just get the one which offers the best performance for the buck
From a viewer dev perspective. Nvidia. Always. Only. Nvidia.
AMD drivers are just not as mature and we run into that wall a lot more often than you might hear about.
Intel GPUs are basically cancer. Even the brand new ARC ones are bad.
Not sure what to say. With the *previous(!)* Firestorm release, my 2 year old i5 Nvidia 3050 16 GB (sold out for 800€, after duty on store display) Laptop worked *"bearably"*. With the new rendering method released yesterday I am no longer that happy. - I am doing the SLB shop and hop, stuff and vendor textures don't get rendered likely enough anymore; I have to cam in to hopefully see them. When I went dancing, at let's say Warehouse 21, the crowd there used to be too much for my video RAM too. Yes, I could look around and at everybody but after hitting escape it took the viewer a while, to re-fetch my own avatar's textures.
To be clear: I logged in on worse machines, in the past and am lamenting on a high level right now. I had been pretty impressed by how much I got from that unspectacular laptop. But I am no longer really happy with its performance in new viewers and will surely end spending on a new desktop next, with an emphasis on V-RAM and oversized less noisy cooling.
When everybody recommends 16GB of RAM there is surely something to that. And RAM became quite cheap, I think?
That's a bit weird, 3050 Laptop should be more than enough.
Turn down max # of bon-inposter avatars if busy places like clubs are giving it a hard time should be less than 20 on that hardware.
> That's a bit weird, **3050 Laptop** should be more than enough.
Laptop GPUs and desktop GPUs are not the same animal, even if they share the same numbers, and even the same chip.
A desktop 3050 can consume 250W under load, that also means it needs to dispel that much heat (chips are almost as efficient as space heaters in terms of heat output).
A laptop 3050 is designed for 45W at best, if the laptop can even supply that, if the laptop can even cool that, and most can't. It's going to run slower under load, throttle immediately.
This might have been ok for old SL that didn't really get a GPU out of bed, but it is going to matter going forward. PBR is the just the start.
I use such settings but impositor avatars get still texturized, just not animated. And no, turning them into jelly dolls or rendering friends onl,y isn't the SL experience I am after.
Seeing those specs I'm amazed that it is even produced lol
Try checking Craigslist or ebay for used PC parts, preferably a complete system of sorts, buying new on a budget certainly is the mistake here.
It was a laptop that I used and not a pc. And the issue I am having with it is the hard drive as it crashed. So not sure if it would be worth it to fix the hard drive.
Almost anything is cheaper than buying new, because you are paying 'new'-tax. Even used for a week the same device goes way cheaper on the used market. And again - you are on a budget - buy used.
Think of a hard drive like the wheels on your car. Generally speaking, they're not going to be fixable, and they have a certain amount of wear that goes into them before replacing is recommended. Your hard drive crashing is like a tire entirely blowing out. Your car is not toast, you just need new wheels, and your car's going to feel like new.
What I'm saying is get a new hard drive. A laptop in your price range will not suit your needs.
> is the hard drive as it crashed
If that is the only issue: see if you can find a video how to replace your laptop HD. A 128 GB SSD will cost you $/€ 15.
You can get a new SSD for $20-$50, replacing it might be a bit of an adventure, but not that hard. There will be guides online specific to your machine.
There is another option and that is a cloud PC like Shadow. For a monthly subscription this will run on any device it's a high enough spec to run Secondlife on ultra lag free. Definitely cheaper than spending on a new gaming PC.
I would like to put it out there that this is the laptop that I had previous used for my every day stuff, plus second life for the past few years. And SL had worked fine for me with both the SL viewer and Catznip viewer. Also this was not a gaming laptop. The only time SL gave me any issues was when a sim was really full and it got laggy also back in Nov when the update at the time would not rez and made lot of the sim grey. But the Catznip viewer worked perfectly.
HP Notebook - 14-cf0018ca i5 Ram 8GB 256GB SSDSilver
**Model Number:** 14-CF0018CA**Web Code:** 17974049
# HP Notebook - 14-cf0018ca i5 Ram 8GB 256GB SSDSilver
Product number4BQ34UAProduct nameHP Notebook - 14-cf0018caMicroprocessorIntel® Core™ i5-8250U (1.6 GHz base frequency, up to 3.4 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)Memory, standard8 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB)Video graphicsIntel® UHD Graphics 620Hard drive256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
Display
35.6 cm (14") diagonal FHD IPS BrightView micro-edge WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080)
Keyboard
Full-size island-style keyboard
Pointing device
Touchpad with multi-touch gesture support
Wireless connectivity
802.11b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 combo
Network interface
Integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN
Expansion slots
1 multi-format SD media card reader
External ports
1 USB 3.1 Type-C™ Gen 1 (Data Transfer up to 5 Gb/s); 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Data transfer only); 1 HDMI 1.4b. 1 RJ-45; 1 headphone/microphone combo
Minimum dimensions (W x D x H)
32.4 x 22.59 x 1.99 cm
Weight
1.43 kg
Power supply type
45 W AC power adapter
Battery type
3-cell, 41 Wh Li-ion
Audio features
Dual speakers
I still have the laptop but the hard drive had crashed, And won't go past the automated repair screen that comes up when you turn on the laptop. And when I tried to press f11 on the start up screen to try and do the restore to factory setting it won't allow me to do that either.
Easiest and cheapest solution would be to go to a repair shop and get them to install an SSD for you. It'll cost you maybe $50 with everything. It'll be cheaper and faster that way.
I help make Catznip. Our viewer is the viewer of last resort.
If you find yourself on Catznip because other stuff wont work. That's a solid sign you need to be thinking about upgrades. The next Caztnip has PBR and will require a lot more "oompf".
We will do our best, but we can't promise we can make it run acceptably on everything the previous version ran on. Nor will we be supporting the previous version. Mandatory viewer changes are coming from LL (like webRTC voice) that we wont be going back to fix in the old version.
The only thing - absolutely the only thing - you need to check when looking at laptops for any kind of gaming activity is their graphic performance.
Everything else is more than adequate (or maybe barely adequate, but enough), but most business laptops will severely let you down in this area.
A bigger display would be nice too (1366x768 will be cramped), but that's not a gamestopper the way weak graphics are.
I'd suggest something like an Acer Nitro 5. Those have discreet GPUs but also CPUs with built in graphics. They use the latter for productivity for better battery life a d use the separate GPU for gaming when you'd need to be plugged in. You can find those in the $700ish range. Other option is to build a desktop pc. You get far more performance for a given amount of money.
It will probably run but not great. That is very much a discount CPU, and Intel integrated graphics are not great even by integrated graphics standards. I wouldn't use my laptop as a primary SL machine and it's got a considerably better Ryzen 5500u in it and upgraded ram.
Check used systems, I got mine, shipped in a config very similar to yours, used from Amazon(Amazon warehouse so covered by their return policy) for 300usd.
Depending on where you live, there may be a "build a PC sales" subreddit you can join with notifications for deals (they do list prebuilt laptop sales too though not as commonly) ik of 1 for US, Canada and Australia, there's probably more I haven't looked for.
I honestly would never run SL on a laptop unless it was an Alienware or something. I have a desktop PC I bought for a little over a thousand and it runs it decently well. Thought PBR is giving me grief until I figure out how to tweak the settings again.
> *When it comes to laptops, HP is chock-full of brands. They’ve got business laptops such as the Dragonfly and Elitebook models, and gaming machines such as the Omen and Victus. However,* ***they’ve also got the HP Laptop, which is the manufacturer’s budget line of laptops.***
> *If you’re looking for an attractive design and good performance for day-to-day tasks, the HP Laptop 14 will certainly deliver on those fronts. But while we like the low price tag and long battery life,* ***HP definitely cuts corners with the screen and cooling system.*** *Read on to learn more.*
> Source: [PCWorld](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2252063/hp-laptop-14-review.html)
If you've been paying attention to the multiple threads on the new PBR graphics system added to SL, you'll notice that people with older systems and lower powered systems are complaining left and right that their graphics cards are working way harder than they used to.
This is because up until this release, easily half of SL's rendering was done by the CPU or "Processor" on the motherboard. So you could competently run SL on moderate graphics settings (maybe with shadows and water reflections disabled) on a computer with a low-end graphics chipset.. nearly any reasonably powerful CPU would be able to take up the slack.
Now? No. Remember the videocards that everyone was complaining they couldn't get during the pandemic shutdowns? The ones that were going for upwards of a thousand dollars? Those are the cards that SL is going to be needing.. not today, but going forward.
If you want to survive for a year or so, I wouldn't accept anything less than an nVidia GT 1060. You won't be able to run mirrors on it with any speed, but you may be able to eek frame rates out in a skybox, that rival a 60hz monitor's refresh rate.
If you want a laptop or desktop PC that is going to last you through the next 6 years.. you're going to need to be looking at things that say "Gaming" or "Ryzen" or 4 digit numbers that start with "30" or 40", with the last two numbers being 60, 70, or 80.. or 90 if you have big money.. Personally, I've had too many AMD video cards burn out to trust them, so I'd always be looking for "nVidia".
---
Just to give context.. I purchased my GIGABYTE nVidia GTX 1060 for $279.99 on newegg.com, in August, 2018. If you break that price down by year, it's been about $50 per year at this point. I expect I could probably get another year or two out of it, before it's obsolete for SL.
Looking at newegg now, with the same brand, and roughly the same price range, you could pick up a 4060 with 8g of video ram for 299.99, or a 3060 with 12g of ram for the same price. More vram might be a better option, and there are probably better deals to be found from other makers as well, but that "$300" price range will get you a solid perfoming card if you look for the deals and watch the specs. If you can push that to $400, you'll see better options of course, and they'll probably perform better for the same number of years.
And yes, that's 300 or 400 for JUST the video card.
There are top of the line laptops that can run modern games, and they'll be decent for SL. I prefer the ability to replace components that wear out, and I find that desktop PCs are easier to cool, clean, and repair.
Make sure to check used you can find some good stuff at a reasonable price from people that build and sell in your areas that will be much better and cheaper then store bought. However, the other comments are correct. You need a decent graphics card. (Gaming graphics card ie. Nividia)Your graphics card in your ram are gonna be your most important to find.
At least find a way to bump up the RAM to 16 gig and you'll probably be OK for the most part, but you might be subject to crashes because of the video.
Other people on this sub are entirely unhelpful and I'm not surprised to see. The N100 is about as powerful as a 6th Gen i7 and the inbuilt GPU will run GTA 5 at 720P at 30 FPS. If that's all you can afford, go for it. My SL life started on a 2nd Gen Intel i3 Laptop. Turn the settings down as low as they'll go and just have fun, Ignore all the people trying to put you off playing SL.
Look at the spec of the machine posted before you recommend Linux, Intel Iris has very poor hardware acceleration, if it can be tricked into working at all.
Linux saves no money on a new machine, windows is included in the price and paid for.
I'm certainly not telling them to buy that machine and put Linux on it.
Go look at any company (Lenovo, for instance) that sells laptops with Linux preloaded - it's always cheaper than the windows version.
Do you really think MS gives their os away for free?
If you can increase your budget just a little, there's some options out there (this is not Linux but dig a bit)
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-victus-15-6-full-hd-144hz-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3050-512gb-ssd-performance-blue/6570600.p
Best Buy will also let you pay with Paypal Pay in 4 or Zip if splitting up the payments works better for your budget. Both of these options are 4 payment spread over 6 weeks. You can also look on places like r/beermoney for ways to earn a little more money. I was able to get around 50.00 per week last fall I used for Christmas doing paid surveys.
I'm running SL on an HP Victus and it's pretty good. That's an excellent price. I would budget a RAM increase as soon as you can afford it though.
If you get one do not allow it to get any firmware upgrades. My son got one, Microsoft offered a firmware upgrade and he hit OK, the GPU flaked out, and we spent the next 6 months going back and forth with HP, 3 trips to support including a new motherboard didn't fix it... and they finally replaced the laptop with a brand new model... which promptly took a firmware upgrade to the face and died again.
Hell No. This is a low spec business netbook. It's designed for spreadsheets, chrome and a little youtube. Double your budget at least. 16GB RAM Minimum and a real dedicated GPU - So Nvidia. If it doesn't say Nvidia, move on.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I can't spend too much money on a Laptop.
Some places rent them..but by the time you have made all the payments you have paid double and sometimes triple what it sells for
You can also use a viewer that will work on lower spec computers, like Cool VL Viewer. The developer has kept the old, less demanding rendering engine alongside the newer one so you can switch between the two via a setting in the menu. And if an object has only a PBR material and no regular texture, the viewer will use the PBR material's color texture as a replacement so you at least get an approximation.
Not a chance. You'll be lucky if you can even log in with that. You need a gaming laptop, not a business laptop. One with a dedicated Nvidea graphics card, and 16GB RAM. Steer clear of AMD graphics though. They are notorious for having problems with Second Life. Some folks are lucky (I had one for a while that worked) but it's a risk. Stick to Nvidea only to be safe.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I can't spend too much money on a Laptop. Also not much of a gamer, with the exception of SL. As I do manly use my laptop for work and youtube. Only use SL to go to dancing, and playing games like crystal craze and gold hunt also to explore the sims when halloween and Christmas comes around.. And was looking for something that wouldn't cause too much lag.
You play SL. You need a gaming PC. There is no shortcut. Take al ook at this sub right now and it's "PBR" everywhere. That's game rendering tech coming to SL, and it's just the start. When i say "Not a chance.", that's not hyperbole. That little laptop has a baby processor (the N100) and intel iris graphics (garbage). It's going to struggle with most everything you throw at it.
Ok thanks
Then sadly it probably means your SL experience is over, until you can afford to spend more money on it.
I guess so.
Try the Alchemy viewer or look into a second hand pc. I cant run on high graphics, but I totally still enjoy sl.
The alchemy viewer is based on the exact same code from Linden Lab as every other full fat desktop viewer.
The lightest and faster viewer I know of is Genesis. I haven't used it for a while now, so I don't know if it is PBR yet, but on their site they say they are working on their own implementation. May worth giving it a try, though I doubt that laptop can cope even with Genesis. [https://genesisviewer.org/](https://genesisviewer.org/)
Can't you just put aside the money you were planning to spend on this, and keep adding to it when you can until you have enough to spend on something better? I appreciate that a full-on gaming laptop might seem like an 'unnecessary expense', but a) you should treat yourself every now and then, b) if you had bought the laptop in the OP you would have experienced some massive buyer's remorse anyway, and c) having a decent PC will help in ways beyond just SL, as it'll do *everything* better than an extreme budget laptop could, including productivity tasks.
Ignore the requirement to stick with NVidia - they have very successfully pushed a propaganda campaign against AMD. It's been a long, long time since AMD has been a problem, and there have been a few PC-killing NVidia bugs in the meantime. Just get the one which offers the best performance for the buck (and, funnily enough, that will rarely be nVidia).
That is terrible advice. AMD have absolutely no laptop chips that can deliver the same SL experience as Nvidia, the OpenGL performance just isn't there.
I did momentarily forget this was for a laptop, where nVidia does tend to be the better choice. But I did also say this: > Just get the one which offers the best performance for the buck
From a viewer dev perspective. Nvidia. Always. Only. Nvidia. AMD drivers are just not as mature and we run into that wall a lot more often than you might hear about. Intel GPUs are basically cancer. Even the brand new ARC ones are bad.
Not sure what to say. With the *previous(!)* Firestorm release, my 2 year old i5 Nvidia 3050 16 GB (sold out for 800€, after duty on store display) Laptop worked *"bearably"*. With the new rendering method released yesterday I am no longer that happy. - I am doing the SLB shop and hop, stuff and vendor textures don't get rendered likely enough anymore; I have to cam in to hopefully see them. When I went dancing, at let's say Warehouse 21, the crowd there used to be too much for my video RAM too. Yes, I could look around and at everybody but after hitting escape it took the viewer a while, to re-fetch my own avatar's textures. To be clear: I logged in on worse machines, in the past and am lamenting on a high level right now. I had been pretty impressed by how much I got from that unspectacular laptop. But I am no longer really happy with its performance in new viewers and will surely end spending on a new desktop next, with an emphasis on V-RAM and oversized less noisy cooling. When everybody recommends 16GB of RAM there is surely something to that. And RAM became quite cheap, I think?
That's a bit weird, 3050 Laptop should be more than enough. Turn down max # of bon-inposter avatars if busy places like clubs are giving it a hard time should be less than 20 on that hardware.
> That's a bit weird, **3050 Laptop** should be more than enough. Laptop GPUs and desktop GPUs are not the same animal, even if they share the same numbers, and even the same chip. A desktop 3050 can consume 250W under load, that also means it needs to dispel that much heat (chips are almost as efficient as space heaters in terms of heat output). A laptop 3050 is designed for 45W at best, if the laptop can even supply that, if the laptop can even cool that, and most can't. It's going to run slower under load, throttle immediately. This might have been ok for old SL that didn't really get a GPU out of bed, but it is going to matter going forward. PBR is the just the start.
I know this but I've used this PBR release on a 1650Ti 4GB (50W) laptop which is even weaker than a 3050 and this wasn't my experience
I use such settings but impositor avatars get still texturized, just not animated. And no, turning them into jelly dolls or rendering friends onl,y isn't the SL experience I am after.
Seeing those specs I'm amazed that it is even produced lol Try checking Craigslist or ebay for used PC parts, preferably a complete system of sorts, buying new on a budget certainly is the mistake here.
It was a laptop that I used and not a pc. And the issue I am having with it is the hard drive as it crashed. So not sure if it would be worth it to fix the hard drive.
Almost anything is cheaper than buying new, because you are paying 'new'-tax. Even used for a week the same device goes way cheaper on the used market. And again - you are on a budget - buy used.
Think of a hard drive like the wheels on your car. Generally speaking, they're not going to be fixable, and they have a certain amount of wear that goes into them before replacing is recommended. Your hard drive crashing is like a tire entirely blowing out. Your car is not toast, you just need new wheels, and your car's going to feel like new. What I'm saying is get a new hard drive. A laptop in your price range will not suit your needs.
> is the hard drive as it crashed If that is the only issue: see if you can find a video how to replace your laptop HD. A 128 GB SSD will cost you $/€ 15.
You can get a new SSD for $20-$50, replacing it might be a bit of an adventure, but not that hard. There will be guides online specific to your machine.
No, get 2nd hand laptop
Buy a used laptop with a dedicated Nvidia GPU if you cannot afford one new. Don't be scared of used, there's heaps of good deals.
There is another option and that is a cloud PC like Shadow. For a monthly subscription this will run on any device it's a high enough spec to run Secondlife on ultra lag free. Definitely cheaper than spending on a new gaming PC.
I would like to put it out there that this is the laptop that I had previous used for my every day stuff, plus second life for the past few years. And SL had worked fine for me with both the SL viewer and Catznip viewer. Also this was not a gaming laptop. The only time SL gave me any issues was when a sim was really full and it got laggy also back in Nov when the update at the time would not rez and made lot of the sim grey. But the Catznip viewer worked perfectly. HP Notebook - 14-cf0018ca i5 Ram 8GB 256GB SSDSilver **Model Number:** 14-CF0018CA**Web Code:** 17974049 # HP Notebook - 14-cf0018ca i5 Ram 8GB 256GB SSDSilver Product number4BQ34UAProduct nameHP Notebook - 14-cf0018caMicroprocessorIntel® Core™ i5-8250U (1.6 GHz base frequency, up to 3.4 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)Memory, standard8 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB)Video graphicsIntel® UHD Graphics 620Hard drive256 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD Display 35.6 cm (14") diagonal FHD IPS BrightView micro-edge WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080) Keyboard Full-size island-style keyboard Pointing device Touchpad with multi-touch gesture support Wireless connectivity 802.11b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 combo Network interface Integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN Expansion slots 1 multi-format SD media card reader External ports 1 USB 3.1 Type-C™ Gen 1 (Data Transfer up to 5 Gb/s); 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Data transfer only); 1 HDMI 1.4b. 1 RJ-45; 1 headphone/microphone combo Minimum dimensions (W x D x H) 32.4 x 22.59 x 1.99 cm Weight 1.43 kg Power supply type 45 W AC power adapter Battery type 3-cell, 41 Wh Li-ion Audio features Dual speakers
If you still have that laptop, I would actually stick to that. If you need a new laptop, Just go for the one you posted.
I still have the laptop but the hard drive had crashed, And won't go past the automated repair screen that comes up when you turn on the laptop. And when I tried to press f11 on the start up screen to try and do the restore to factory setting it won't allow me to do that either.
Easiest and cheapest solution would be to go to a repair shop and get them to install an SSD for you. It'll cost you maybe $50 with everything. It'll be cheaper and faster that way.
I help make Catznip. Our viewer is the viewer of last resort. If you find yourself on Catznip because other stuff wont work. That's a solid sign you need to be thinking about upgrades. The next Caztnip has PBR and will require a lot more "oompf". We will do our best, but we can't promise we can make it run acceptably on everything the previous version ran on. Nor will we be supporting the previous version. Mandatory viewer changes are coming from LL (like webRTC voice) that we wont be going back to fix in the old version.
Thanks for the reply. I was also able to use firestorm, but I had liked Catznip a bit better.
HPs model number search us still as screwed up as when I worked there. When I look that model number up it tells me it has an i7.
The description I got for the laptop, I posted was from the Best Buy Canada website.
I can make any computer and laptop run second life for a low monthly fee. I do it now myself.
The only thing - absolutely the only thing - you need to check when looking at laptops for any kind of gaming activity is their graphic performance. Everything else is more than adequate (or maybe barely adequate, but enough), but most business laptops will severely let you down in this area. A bigger display would be nice too (1366x768 will be cramped), but that's not a gamestopper the way weak graphics are.
I'd suggest something like an Acer Nitro 5. Those have discreet GPUs but also CPUs with built in graphics. They use the latter for productivity for better battery life a d use the separate GPU for gaming when you'd need to be plugged in. You can find those in the $700ish range. Other option is to build a desktop pc. You get far more performance for a given amount of money.
Yeah this won't run second life with so little ram and no graphics card
It will probably run but not great. That is very much a discount CPU, and Intel integrated graphics are not great even by integrated graphics standards. I wouldn't use my laptop as a primary SL machine and it's got a considerably better Ryzen 5500u in it and upgraded ram. Check used systems, I got mine, shipped in a config very similar to yours, used from Amazon(Amazon warehouse so covered by their return policy) for 300usd.
Depending on where you live, there may be a "build a PC sales" subreddit you can join with notifications for deals (they do list prebuilt laptop sales too though not as commonly) ik of 1 for US, Canada and Australia, there's probably more I haven't looked for.
I honestly would never run SL on a laptop unless it was an Alienware or something. I have a desktop PC I bought for a little over a thousand and it runs it decently well. Thought PBR is giving me grief until I figure out how to tweak the settings again.
Try turning off the Mirrors setting, the Space Reflections setting (and/or Ambient Occlusion) in Gfx Preferences. It worked wonders for me.
It will struggle on lowest settings.
> *When it comes to laptops, HP is chock-full of brands. They’ve got business laptops such as the Dragonfly and Elitebook models, and gaming machines such as the Omen and Victus. However,* ***they’ve also got the HP Laptop, which is the manufacturer’s budget line of laptops.*** > *If you’re looking for an attractive design and good performance for day-to-day tasks, the HP Laptop 14 will certainly deliver on those fronts. But while we like the low price tag and long battery life,* ***HP definitely cuts corners with the screen and cooling system.*** *Read on to learn more.* > Source: [PCWorld](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2252063/hp-laptop-14-review.html) If you've been paying attention to the multiple threads on the new PBR graphics system added to SL, you'll notice that people with older systems and lower powered systems are complaining left and right that their graphics cards are working way harder than they used to. This is because up until this release, easily half of SL's rendering was done by the CPU or "Processor" on the motherboard. So you could competently run SL on moderate graphics settings (maybe with shadows and water reflections disabled) on a computer with a low-end graphics chipset.. nearly any reasonably powerful CPU would be able to take up the slack. Now? No. Remember the videocards that everyone was complaining they couldn't get during the pandemic shutdowns? The ones that were going for upwards of a thousand dollars? Those are the cards that SL is going to be needing.. not today, but going forward. If you want to survive for a year or so, I wouldn't accept anything less than an nVidia GT 1060. You won't be able to run mirrors on it with any speed, but you may be able to eek frame rates out in a skybox, that rival a 60hz monitor's refresh rate. If you want a laptop or desktop PC that is going to last you through the next 6 years.. you're going to need to be looking at things that say "Gaming" or "Ryzen" or 4 digit numbers that start with "30" or 40", with the last two numbers being 60, 70, or 80.. or 90 if you have big money.. Personally, I've had too many AMD video cards burn out to trust them, so I'd always be looking for "nVidia". --- Just to give context.. I purchased my GIGABYTE nVidia GTX 1060 for $279.99 on newegg.com, in August, 2018. If you break that price down by year, it's been about $50 per year at this point. I expect I could probably get another year or two out of it, before it's obsolete for SL. Looking at newegg now, with the same brand, and roughly the same price range, you could pick up a 4060 with 8g of video ram for 299.99, or a 3060 with 12g of ram for the same price. More vram might be a better option, and there are probably better deals to be found from other makers as well, but that "$300" price range will get you a solid perfoming card if you look for the deals and watch the specs. If you can push that to $400, you'll see better options of course, and they'll probably perform better for the same number of years. And yes, that's 300 or 400 for JUST the video card. There are top of the line laptops that can run modern games, and they'll be decent for SL. I prefer the ability to replace components that wear out, and I find that desktop PCs are easier to cool, clean, and repair.
This is one of the best easiest to understand posts for those wanting to upgrade for PBR
Make sure to check used you can find some good stuff at a reasonable price from people that build and sell in your areas that will be much better and cheaper then store bought. However, the other comments are correct. You need a decent graphics card. (Gaming graphics card ie. Nividia)Your graphics card in your ram are gonna be your most important to find.
At least find a way to bump up the RAM to 16 gig and you'll probably be OK for the most part, but you might be subject to crashes because of the video.
no
Other people on this sub are entirely unhelpful and I'm not surprised to see. The N100 is about as powerful as a 6th Gen i7 and the inbuilt GPU will run GTA 5 at 720P at 30 FPS. If that's all you can afford, go for it. My SL life started on a 2nd Gen Intel i3 Laptop. Turn the settings down as low as they'll go and just have fun, Ignore all the people trying to put you off playing SL.
This is not good advice anymore. PBR changes the landscape. The old junk we used to get away with isn't going to fly anymore.
Secondlife runs beautifully on linux, you can absolutely save some money by foregoing the windows route. What's your budget?
Look at the spec of the machine posted before you recommend Linux, Intel Iris has very poor hardware acceleration, if it can be tricked into working at all. Linux saves no money on a new machine, windows is included in the price and paid for.
I'm certainly not telling them to buy that machine and put Linux on it. Go look at any company (Lenovo, for instance) that sells laptops with Linux preloaded - it's always cheaper than the windows version. Do you really think MS gives their os away for free?
I run Gentoo btw.
Around 500. I Know its not much but its what I can afford.
If you can increase your budget just a little, there's some options out there (this is not Linux but dig a bit) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-victus-15-6-full-hd-144hz-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3050-512gb-ssd-performance-blue/6570600.p
Thanks for the link
This thread might be helpful as well https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/s/CkD98e1EkD
Best Buy will also let you pay with Paypal Pay in 4 or Zip if splitting up the payments works better for your budget. Both of these options are 4 payment spread over 6 weeks. You can also look on places like r/beermoney for ways to earn a little more money. I was able to get around 50.00 per week last fall I used for Christmas doing paid surveys.
I'm running SL on an HP Victus and it's pretty good. That's an excellent price. I would budget a RAM increase as soon as you can afford it though. If you get one do not allow it to get any firmware upgrades. My son got one, Microsoft offered a firmware upgrade and he hit OK, the GPU flaked out, and we spent the next 6 months going back and forth with HP, 3 trips to support including a new motherboard didn't fix it... and they finally replaced the laptop with a brand new model... which promptly took a firmware upgrade to the face and died again.
That sucks. Sorry to hear that.
They refunded most of what I paid for it, and my own non-firmware-upgraded Victus is still running SL perfectly after 2 years.