On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 13:30:47 +0100, "Eg Egemarke"
<egemarke@hotmail.com> wrote:

How can i see progress in boinc, will it tell me a number of workunits or 
time ?!?
What is the "catch" with boinc is it faster or what ?!?

-- 

NO total number of workunits crunched stat under Boinc/Seti.
Boinc is an overlay program that other programs run under. Seti is
just one of them go here for a faitly up to date list"
http://distributedcomputing.info/projects.html

There are couple of times shown in the Boinc box. Time spent so far
processing the current unit and time left to finish, both are
approximate.  On my machines, I have a bunch, Seti under Boinc takes
about 15 minutes longer per unit. 

The "catch" with Boinc is that it can run many different projects
under it not just Seti. You canthen choose to run all or one or just
some of them. You also choose how much processing time to give to each
project, 50% for one, 30% for another, and 20% for the last for
example.

Boinc can also do an upgrade of the underlying software when the
Scientists decide a change is needed. This means that the Science can
be changed on the fly. It also means that Berkeley now has control of
your Seti software, if that bothers you then you can turn it off but
you won't get any more units until you manually do the upgrade.

One of the advantages of Boinc is that each computer requests credits
for the time spent crunching each unit. This requested credit is then
comapared to the other machines crunching the same unit and if they
are similar the unit is considered done and no one needs to crunch it.
In Classic a unit could have been sent out a few hundred times and no
one new if it was crunched properly or not. Those who overclock and
don't verify are in trouble as their credits could be way out of whack
and they may end up with no credits. No more one unit one credit
either, now you get credits based on the middle of the first 3 results
returned for the unit. Each unit is sent out 4 times with a 2 week
time limit to return it. If your computer does not return it within
that 2 weeks the unit is sent out again however many times is required
unit valid results are obtained. Up to a max of 15 times, after that
it is marked as bad and sent directly to Berkeeley to crunch.
The credit is granted based on the middle amount of the 3 computers
that return the unit first. If the Berkeley computer is slow and 4
results are returned before it gets around to granting credit then an
average of the 4 results is given to everyone.

If you have more questions feel fre to ask.