Windows 10 and Second Life: A Match Made In Heaven? - Mackenzie Abbot Reporting

As you may or may not know from reading my personal blogs, I’ve been testing out Windows 10 after it downloaded on Thursday, the 30th of August (a day after it said it would).

So far, everything is still hunky dorey in my computing life.  My experience with Second Life hasn’t changed.  I’m still busy beavering away at the Second Life Enquirer, chasing up and writing articles and trying to keep Lanai sober enough to pay me for past work.  A lot of people have been a bit weary about upgrading to WX (as I like to call it) for a variety of reasons; in my experience, a lot of this stems around “will it work with my hardware?”, “Will it work with my drivers or will i need new ones?” and, of course “Will it work with SL?”

In my case, the answers are “yes, yes it’ll work with your existing setup and yes again” in that order.

I’ve tested it out on several viewers, including Firestorm (See video below), Catznip and Linden Labs own viewer and they all work as they should with no noticeable difference.

Video Player Another big concern, particularly among the DJ circles, is “Will SAM Broadcaster work on it?”

Well there have been cries of “NOOOO! it doesn't work on Windows 10! Windows 10 sucks ass!!!”

The reason behind this is the use of cracked or nulled versions of SAM.  Unless you have a legitimate copy with a legitimate serial, you’re going to run into problems.  I’m not going to judge or preach about piracy having used cracked copies myself until last Christmas, when my other half bought me a legit copy.  Again, in my experience, version 2014.7 works absolutely fine (see image below)

Since upgrading to WX, I’ve noticed a few improvements in speed (unusual considering i have an i3 core processor and 10GB of RAM).  Things open a lot quicker and run smoother.  I’ve also noticed the distinct lack of “xxx has stopped responding” messages which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is a huge plus.  However, there is something I can’t quite work out.  The audio from my USB headphones seem’s clearer, despite no changes to the driver itself.

But, by far, the biggest surprise for me was the speed of Microsoft Edge, the replacement for Internet Explorer.  By golly, that bitch moves!  It equals the speed of loading the BBC News website (http://bbc.co.uk/news) by milliseconds, there really is very little noticeable difference.  It’s like “POW!” and the website has loaded.  Microsoft seem to have finally come screaming into the 21ts century and developed the ideal Internet Explorer which is fast, slimmed down and instantly likeable to Chrome heathens like myself; something they should have done maybe 5 years ago.  Downloads now compare to Chrome in speed as well, downloading in seconds rather than days.

This article is by no means definitive and thorough, as you can see i’ve not even scratched the surface, but after all the kerfuffle of Windows 8 then 8.1, MS seem to have, at last, rejoined the world of enjoyable computing.  If you’re still unsure, back up your current setup, upgrade to WX (hey, it’s free after all) and then have a play.  Don’t like it?  Roll it back.  MS make this very easy to do and will still respect you in the morning.  You really do have nothing to lose except a few hours.

And it can’t be that bad surely?