One computer, multiple Second Life clients

The theme of having alts (alternate avatars) to multiply the camping sessions has already been discussed on this blog, and you know that JaneLight is helping JohnLight to camp intesively.

To do this, I use two computers, as only one instance of the the Second Life client can run per computer. I had many in-world questions about that, and many people were disapointed by the "one client per PC" answer.

Nevertheless, if your computer is powerful enough (and I mean really powerful here), there is a solution using virtualisation. The idea is to use special software (Virtual PC, VMWare, Parallels Desktop on Intel Macs) to simulate a second PC, which is kind of isolated from the physical one.

Doing so, you can run one Second Life client per virtual PC, and one on the PC itself. But once again, you need quite a robust computer to do that. I tried on my MacBook, but running the native Second Life client, the virtual PC, and a second client in it was just too much. It was so slow that it was un-usable.

I know some people using this technique intensively, running up to four clients on a single physical PC, so their camping sessions are really effective, but this needs a lot of avatar management and monitoring.