The adventures of Horatia Abonwood, mainland homeowner, part 1

Linden Labs has put so much effort in the last 8 months or so into attempting to make the new user experience easier. As someone who came back in Second Life in the last year, I can appreciate that. However, I think that a little effort could be made into further integrating those new users further along the path of Second Life participation  - in particular, the transition from Linden Home owner to land owner.

After several months of Linden Home ownership I finally gave in, abandoned a Linden Home for the last time, and went in search of land to buy. I had several reasons for doing so, but the biggest came down to one word: LAG. Since I write a fashion blog, I want to capture images almost every day, and my time to do so is in the evening (east coast USA). Most of those images I capture in a photo studio, so part of my "owned" home or land needs to accommodate one. Every Meadowbrook home that I tried had extensive lag in the evenings. Many of the Tahoe homes did as well.  For various reasons I had already ruled out Elderglen (too small and I wasn't into the hobbit-fantasy styling) and Shareta Osumai (every single home in this line that I tried had a malfunctioning control panel).

So off I go, attempting to find out what I need to know to own land, and what kind of land to buy.  I think about what I really want to accomplish with a land purchase: put a house on the ground for furniture/home decor sets (and occasionally change out that house to try out new ones), and a simple skybox in the air for a photo studio. I determine that I want about 1024m of land - 512m will be too small, and with too low of a prim allowance.

Based on what I read around the web, it appears that mainland will be cheaper in the long run. First I look on XStreetSL/Second Life Marketplace, and then I dig around on the Second Life web site, finding the land auctions. This seems promising. I watch for a few days, then start visiting land.

(to be continued)