The Linden Lab blog post about Project Zipper has so far met with an underwhelming response. Project Zipper, for those who don’t know, is a new Second Life project viewer that apparently improves the installation speed of the Second Life viewer.
My initial reaction to this news was “?!?!?!?! WTF!” I must admit that was my second and third reaction too. I’m not alone in this, others have expressed bemusement as to why this is an important improvement.
The Second Life client download and install times have never been something that has struck me as being problematic. Some third party viewers have larger download and install times, and I have never found that problematic either.
The largely bemused response is pretty much summed up in Inara Pey’s blog post on the subject, Inara tested the install times of Project Zipper and the official Second Life client on her system and the results were:
- Second Life release viewer 2.7.2.286707: 35.6 seconds
- Second Life Project Zipper viewer 3.7.2.286810: 16.4 seconds
Now you could look at this and say that Project Zipper installs in less than half the time of the current release viewer, which put in those terms is an impressive achievement. However it amounts to just over 19 seconds difference, which in reality is neither here or there. People on other systems may see better or worse results, but I’d imagine in most cases, people aren’t going to be blown away by this.
However a couple of folk have added a bit more detail, which makes this sound a bit more interesting.
Continue reading “Is There More To Project Zipper Than Meets The Eye?”