Do Something Useful With Your CPU

Join the Stardock/WinCustomize.com Folding@Home team today!

Published on December 19, 2004 By GreenReaper In Personal Computing

Does your computer sit there doing nothing most of the time? Worried that using a $1000 computer just for web-browsing is a bit wasteful? Are you thinking that SETI@Home or distributed.net may be fruitless endeavours? Well, you just might be interested in Folding@Home! Have your computer spend its time doing some useful calculations for medical research (see the FAQ) rather than letting those cycles go to waste, and download a client now!

I've made a Stardock/WinCustomize.com team - all you have to do is enter team ID number 41029 when asked by the Folding@Home client. And that's it! It will automatically get new blocks of work from the internet every so often and send results back, but you shouldn't have to touch it unless you want to. I chose to have it installed as a service, and the only way I know it's running is that CPU is at 100% or thereabouts all the time. It's all idle use, so it's not stealing the cycles from anything I want to run, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that my computer is working on something useful . . . even when I'm asleep. Give it a go!

Comments (Page 2)

GreenReaper

on Dec 20, 2004

Yes, it usually takes at least half a day to do a work unit (I only have 6!) and a day to update the stats . . . but don't worry, you will be counted.

Thomas Thomassen

on Dec 20, 2004

And not to forget grid.org http://www.grid.org/home.htm

MadPyro

on Dec 20, 2004

will join when i have time ... bell rang lol

Woodbridge

on Dec 20, 2004

I was given a fairly large thingy to process, has been going for 24 hours (at least 12hrs with 100% cpu) and I've only done 40% of 1 WU

3.2Ghz cpu

EventHorizon

on Dec 20, 2004

Oh heck, why not?

+200mhz from the above.

GreenReaper

on Dec 21, 2004

That's OK; the longer it takes, the more points you get for the work unit. It balances out.

And well done to Aleatoric, who has already completed two work units!

Aleatoric

on Dec 21, 2004

I had worked with folding@home a while back, but after moving and rebuilding the PCs several times, it got lost in the shuffle. Thanks for the reminder!

Got it running on both of my primary boxes (one windows, one linux), both pretty fast machines.

GreenReaper

on Dec 22, 2004

It's getting busy on the team board - looks like I won't be at the top for long.

Well done everyone who's started running it, and for those who haven't, join up today!

CalimeroQueen

on Dec 22, 2004

Ok, my poor 1.4GHz needs circa 10 days to compute one WU...

We just now need a F@H icon for our docks

And a docklet as the one for Seti wil also be fine !!
Thanks in advance to the community. I could try an icon if I had time but for the docklet...!

Essencay

on Dec 26, 2004

BUMP....this really deserves to be seen again by folks

Go Team WinCustomize

GreenReaper

on Dec 29, 2004

We've just passed the 100-work-unit mark, and are close to 10000 points over at Folding@Home. Go Team WinCustomize!

Essencay

on Dec 30, 2004

And we're closing in on being within the top ten percent of teams

GreenReaper

on Mar 27, 2005

I just checked - the Stardock/WinCustomize team has reached rank 1111 of 37130 with 15 active contributors, well within the top 5% of teams. Let's hope it's not too long until we get into the first thousand! If you're just reading this now, please join up and help out.

MikeB314

on Mar 27, 2005

I must have missed this the first time around. I just signed up.

WebGizmos

on Mar 27, 2005

I have a few nice Seti@home icons if anyone is interested. I forgot where I found them. If interested email me at msn.com and I'll send you the zip file...3 icons.

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