What ever it takes to get into Second Life? For a web user not accustomed to the immersive virtual worlds the answer seems obvious: just go on the official website, register (from the beginning of 2011, with the closing of Teen Second Life, you can join Second Life if you have are at least 16 years old), download the software ("client" or "viewer") that allows you to connect online with the over 2 thousand Intel or AMD servers of Linden Lab (as of March 2007) and log in, ready for an adventure that can last a few hours or many years, depending upon interest and time availability.

But no, the devil sometimes takes the corner and you find yourself soon disconnected, if you come crash after few minutes, in the worst case are even unable to complete the login that the system has already rejected you. What to do? Apart from sending some heartfelt appeal to your holy patron could check here: http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements and whether the characteristics of your hardware are suitable for the Linden Lab platform. At the moment, the minimal technical requirements are those:

• cable or DSL internet connection;
• XP, Vista, or Windows 7 (32-bit only) operating system;
• 800 MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better like computer processor (but is recommended of 1.5 GHz (XP), 2-GHz (Vista) 32-bit (x86) or better);
• computer memory of at least 512 MB or more (but believe us, much better the recommended "1 GB or more");
• screen resolution o 1027x768 pixe or higher.

Critical point: grafics card has to be at least a Nvidia GeForce 6600, or an Ati Radeon 8500, or an Intel 945, if you use Windows XP, but really is much, much better if you have at lest a Nvidia 9600, 9800, 275 GTX or 295 GTX series. Or at lest an Ati 4850, 4870, 4890, 5850, 5870 or 5970. On http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Graphics_Cards you can find more details on this point, note that some older cards are not really compatible with the technology platform of Linden Lab. As stated on the page mentioned earlier there are also specific to own if you are a Mac user (you need an operating system Mac OS X 10.4.11 or a Mac OS X 10.5.4 or better, with 1.5 GHz Intel based Mac or 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or above computer processor) or if you use Linux like operating system. Once these requirements are verified at a good point: your journey into the avatars' world can begin.