Eric wrote:
[...]

I'm going to play with CLI (Win) and see how that goes.  Eventually, hoping
to switch these dumb boxes to Linux as well.  I'm assuming Boinc for Linux
is probably very streamlined...

Yep, it all works very well on Linux.

Not sure what you mean by 'streamlined' exactly. There are optimised clients (Boinc & s@h) that give a x2 speedup (for Windows also) and you get many choices as to how to run it all. With the new OS scheduler in the Linux 2.6 kernels, the system always stays very responsive for the user.

Have fun,
Martin