Hello Dave,

Dave Trapnell wrote:

I probably will not go to BOINC for several non-pejorative
reasons. I'm using too much electricity by leaving computers
running. Newer, faster computers tend to be noisy without
special measures and are preferably turned off when not in
use. Newer CRT's go into amber mode and therefore have less
need for screensavers. (Seti Classic was too slow unless the
screensaver was turned off, anyway.) LCD screens don't burn
in (I think) and therefore don't need screensavers at all.

Why don't run the seti app in the background, without the screensaver.
The seti app now runs at a low priority, and so it get only the CPU, you not need for your applications. So you can let it run will you are working on this machine.

Newer computers boot faster because of faster processors and
Windows Hibernation and therefore provide less incentive for
leaving them on. The fastest Athlon XP's (and perhaps the
Intels as well) are hard to cool, and leaving them on sucks
in more dust, requiring cleaning. Lastly, Win2K and WinXP
are sufficiently stable that one can reasonably expect them
to boot without problems.

It should not be a big problem to get a WU computed withing the deadline, if you let the seti app only run when you use the computer.

On the other hand, excessive thermal cycling increases
motherboard failure. It also seems to cause the heat sink
compound to gradually work it's way out from between the
CPU-heatsink sandwich. I was told the compound on XP 3200's
should be replaced at least every six months anyway. This is
not a pleasant prospect.  Someone actually suggested the
main reason AMD introduced the Athlon 64 was to give an
excuse to make the die bigger, and therefore easier to cool.

I never had such problems on my systems. And I running seti for 6 1/2 years now.
But there are a couple of third party tools which limit the CPU usage of the seti app to a configured value.

I haven't had a chance to test this out.  I don't really see
64 bit OS'es and Apps lining up, except for BOINC. Then

A lot of Unixes (HPUX, TRU64, Solaris, AIX, Irix) are 64 bit since a long time. With a lot of 64 bit apps.
So far I know are there some 64 bit seti apps avaliable. On the 64 bit Unixes seti runs 10 to 25 % faster compared with the 32 bit apps.


Regards

Lars