Well, I gave Second Life a shot. I heard folks from Alliance pitch how their library uses it (one librarian on staff even spends half her workweek in SL, per her job description!) during one of those informative quickie-sessions at ACRL in Baltimore last year. They were all pretty enthusiastic, so I signed up. But, much like everybody else (except a lot of Germans; apparently they find it very appealing over there), I quickly became disenchanted.
SL as an app is just too balky. It sucks up more memory than even IE and requires a ton of bandwidth. In addition, it's unreliable: when your avatar is acting like he's lost in space, or the screen doesn't paint, or your mouse sits promptless for minutes, you don't know if the problem is with your connection, your pc, or SL's hopefully gigantic server farm wimping out. Another gripe: lack of decent tutorials or documention--hey, I'm a Virgo: give me details, please. And a final whine: how about allowing go-backs, Linden Lab guys? I mean, your avatar learns the ropes, gets some confidence, you figure it's time to leave Orientation Island and what-the-f....you can't go back! What gives with that! Part of gaming is making mistakes and learning from 'em; it's an empirical digital world, but SL doesn't seem to agree. Once you're off the island you're stuck finding your way around with the crappy tutorials, which give you a few basics: how to pick something up, how to fly, etc., but after that you're screwed--you can spend hours (s-l-ow-l-y) wandering around SL and not getting anywhere.
So, I'm like a lot of folks: tried Second Life, thought it cool for a while, then discovered reality. Don't get me wrong: The concept of SL's digital libraries as a new vehicle for supplying information to people is a great one and I'm all for it--I just wish the vehicle was easier to drive.
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