SLim: Why Isn't Every SLr Using It?

So, a couple days ago I installed SLim. It lets me do text and voice chat with anyone on my avatar's buddy list, without having to be logged into Second Life's browser. This is nice, especially since on my computer with a good video card and dual-processor and 2gb of RAM, I'm using up over half a gig of RAM, 1 meg of bandwidth, and the entirety of one of my CPUs when I run Second Life.

The client looks similar to your average IM client - AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! chat, etc. The interface is really simple, as there's only a few features to think about - text chat, voice call chat, and editing your settings. And it's cool that when I'm logged in to SLim, I appear in my friends' friends lists as online, but with a special chat bubble style icon instead of the avatar icon.

I now plan to keep it running whenever I have my regular chat running (I use Skype for voice and Trillian to handle my various IM clients). It uses 38m of RAM, so no big deal. (Compare that with Firefox, which balloons in memory usage.)

This brings me to the question: Why isn't every SLr using SLim?

So, there's several reasons, and I'll just plow through them.

- It doesn't work with every client.
I haven't quite figured this one out, but I can't IM / voice chat with everyone on my friend list. I think it's the release candidate that works, but not 100% sure. This irks me, and is probably the single biggest reason SLim is not being used.

- Lack of widespread promotion.
Linden Lab has promoted SLim in its blog and announcements, but let's face it - the general public doesn't really read these. I haven't seen it as a startup tip, it's not in the orientation, it's not on the Secondlife.com website, and it's nowhere inside the Second Life client in-world.

- Lack of ease of finding it.
Why isn't there a link in the Communicate floater? If Linden Lab can embed a L$ symbol into the browser that directs the user to their L$ purchasing sight, it seems a no-brainer that they can embed a SLim link.

- You can't add / remove buddies directly from your SLim client.
It requires a special browser to update the buddy list. Linden Lab has yet to integrate functionality of the SLim with the regular SL browser. You need to download a special SLim compatible browser, and run that in order for the friend-list refresh button to work on SLim.

- It's run by Vivox, not Linden Lab. Naturally, anything you do with 2 companies has twice the red tape.

- Downloading and getting this sucker to work is at least a 6-step process. Allow me to illustrate:

1. Go here: https://secure-web14.secondlife.com/SLim/index.php?lang=en and log in with your Second Life avatar that you want to associate with SLim.

2. Download a regular SL browser that is compatible with SLim.

3. Download the SLim client.

4. Sign up for a SLim account.
Basically, Vivox runs the client. You log into the SL page as your
avatar, then register an email and a NEW password with Vivox, and
it'll tie your SL account to the SLim account.

5. Run both the SLim client and the SLim Second Life client at the same time.

6. On SLim, click the blue refresh icon. Your buddies will populate.

From there on in, you may use the SLim client without the SL SLim-friendly client. However, to add friends and to update your friend list with your avatar's in-world, you'll need to run the Second Life SLim-friendly client and have that up when you click the refresh button.

Of course, if more people start using SLim, maybe it would give Linden Lab incentive to improve it.