I'm not going to turn this into a full-blown review of Second Life. After all, by now it has its share of admirers and detractors. For me, in the negatives column is the dubious avatar anatomy; graphics that are more than a couple of generations old; and less than intuitive movement and camera controls (hint: fly everywhere). But overall, it's hard to fault it. It helps to turn on anti-aliasing if your system supports it to help smooth things out. It won't do much for some of the ugly textures and wonky geometry, but it helps.

Suffice it to say that for a modestly sized free download, it provides a serviceable view port into a virtual world.

I didn't do much in the way of exploring, so I called up the search box and headed straight to IBM's Business Center.

You can tell that IBM used pros to design their Second Life island. Everything looks slick and proportionate and is punctuated by neat touches like displays that stream multimedia.

You can teleport directly to the green data center once you arrive on IBM's island, but it's best to work your way there to take in the expertly crafted landscape and buildings, and enjoy a sense of place, however virtual. In short, it's a welcome oasis from some of the eye-bleedingly bad neighborhoods.

On the main floor and to the right there's a lobby area and stairs to the second floor while the data center proper is on the left. Not much to see here, so I went upstairs first, saving the best for last.

Once upstairs, there's a neat animated Hot and Cold Air Demo as well as an area that showcases IBM's data center assessment, design and construction services with handy shortcuts to PDFs.

Along the perimeter are case studies fixtures featuring Georgia Tech, AISO.net, Bryant University, Centrinet and Rabobank. Touching any of the several pedestals calls up more detailed information on the elements that went into their green IT makeovers. Interesting fact: solar-powered web hosting provider AISO.net was able to consolidate 100 servers into just 4 IBM System x servers using virtualization, which, in part, reduced power and cooling costs by 60 percent and now allows them to sell excess solar power to the grid. Woo-hoo!

Lastly, there’s a terrace where you can take in the sights.

Back downstairs and through the mantrap is the heart of the virtual data center. Having been in a handful of data centers, I have to say that they did a good job with this virtual representation. Clearly, however, Second Life allows style to edge out dull reality.

Throughout, they included interesting little touches like a spare, open blade server; pulling up the floor panels to expose the cabling under the raised floor; a multimedia presentation on storage (ILM mostly); and seeing the Rear Door Heat eXchanger in action.

Topping it off is a sparse NOC, with interactive displays (Tivoli, power management) and CNN's Anderson Cooper (?!) lording over it all on one of the simulated television monitors.

There are tons of other interactive touches, but I'll leave you to discover them. In all, it's a slick way to showcase how IBM is tackling energy efficient IT operations and the options available to customers.

Now, if only my avatar didn't look quite so creepy...