What you need

You need a computer and an internet connection. I am not sure about the exact specifications but if your computer isn’t very old and your connection isn’t very slow it will work.

Second Life is a very dynamic virtual world that you connect to over the internet and shows a graphic display that could be compared to a video game. So it asks a few things from your hardware, try to have not too much other programs running and surely nothing that uses a lot of your bandwidth (p2p, you tube, skype that stuff… put it all off)

If you have a Windows PC, a Mac or a Linux machine doesn’t matter.

Besides that you will need some time to get to know your new world. You might feel a bit helpless in the beginning. You came to Second Life to have a good time and you end up spending most of your time learning about Second Life.

Don’t worry about that too much. In the beginning it might look as that it will cost weeks and weeks.. but it will cost only a few hours to understand all the basics. After that you’ll be having enough control over your avatar to go around and have your second life. From time to time you will still be doing things you didn’t do before and learn something but you are already far beyond being helpless, noobish and lost.

You will get

A whole new world where you can do almost anything filled with beautiful locations to visit and other players ready to get to know you and have a good time with you.

You will choose who you are, what you are and what you do. I am a mom in real life who goes shopping on a bike. In second life I am or was:

• A panther warrior who shoots arrows on other warriors
• A club owner
• A slave
• A mistress
• A guide for new residents
• A princess
• A sweet girl dancing with nice guys
• A lesbian
• A guy
• A dragon
• A barmaid

and..a lot of things I still didn’t do. You can choose who you are and what you are, with no limits. I just choose these things..You might end up as a vampire, a cat or a pilot..or just as you. It is all up to you.

There isn’t anything like Second Life giving you such a freedom. You just want some cybersex? Fine. You want to build your own castle? Fine. You want to start a business? Fine. You want to hang out with cute people of the other gender? Fine. Anything else that is within the law and not utterly disgusting? Fine too. All is possible.

Costs?

Zero. Nada. Nope. US$ 0

You can spend some money on e.g. a premium account, nice clothes, a house..and many other things but perfectly live a very interesting and happy second life at zero costs.

Well.. when you start to like it. Consider spending just a few dollars each month to buy yourself some Linden dollars. Not being broke all the time or to be capable of buying that wonderful outfit for the equivalent of US$0.30 or so might be very worth the price. But again, it is not needed and many residents have a great time while not spending a single dime.

Let’s do it

You need to create an account, download a viewer and install it. Then start your viewer, log in with your account. 10 minutes work and then you are an avatar in Second Life.

It is simple, while creating the account you have to follow a few steps and at the end you have a username and password plus the viewer installed. Here I have a page where I give you a step by step guide:  Create a second life account.

All done: Start your viewer, enter your username and password and click the big login button. A screen will pop up asking you if you accept the Terms of Service. Accept them and off you go. You are now a full featured avatar within Second Life.

Of course you have no idea what to do. So you continue reading at my enter second life page. Afterwards you still feel rather helpless so we’ll continue on the page about a few basic principles.

Don’t worry

Don’t worry about a thing. You cannot do anything really wrong and if you might look silly to someone because you are new..so what? Don’t try to hide the fact that you are new, more experienced residents all can just check that info in your profile. It shows a creation date.

You have my site loaded with info to help you get going, to find places and to understand things.

Remember that all those other avatars are also people. People who you might want to treat with respect and people who can help you out if you have a problem. People who also came to Second Life to have a good time.

Before you start discovering your new world.. you did bookmark this site? Did you? Not to say about myself how wonderful my little site is but browsing a bit further in my pages you will still find a whole bunch of info you could find useful.