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 1)

Dr Guy

on Dec 19, 2004

I knew they had this for the Mac, did not realize they had it for windows. Thanks. Just downloaded and I will join 41029

GAIAStevef

on Dec 19, 2004

Joined as well... (How do you go about getting your name listed as a team member on the stats page ?).

GreenReaper

on Dec 19, 2004

Once your computer submits a work unit and it updates the stats page, it will show you. This may take some time (a block gets done in about a day here).

qrush

on Dec 19, 2004

I'll be folding!

GreenReaper

on Dec 19, 2004

They have it for everything! (almost

)

Snowman

on Dec 19, 2004

Folding away here too

Essencay

on Dec 19, 2004

Joined

GreenReaper

on Dec 19, 2004

Great . . . all we need is everyone who visits WC to sign up and we can almost have real-time folding!

Woodbridge

on Dec 19, 2004

Sorry, my cpu is busy processing 2390 snowflakes

ok, ok, I'll cut back to 250 flakes

GreenReaper

on Dec 20, 2004

In theory the flakes should come first . . . it is Christmas, after all!

Adam Najmanowicz

on Dec 20, 2004

I was doing Seti@home before I discovered my Athlon 64 comes with a Cool'n'quiet thing and before it was sitting there for a week without doing a thing because Seti ran out or units to compute.

With this little program here:
Link
You can help saving Amozon forest... a bit... or conserve the world oil supplies... a bit...

unfortunately it will not work well with SETI@home since it will drop the power consumption only when the CPU usage is low and Seti@home makes it... well... not low.

GreenReaper

on Dec 20, 2004

But with Folding@Home you can help the process of genetically engineering new forests!

Dr Guy

on Dec 20, 2004

ONe caveat tho. We lost our broadband last night, and the screen saver does not cut on for some reason. Cable says we should have it back some time today tho.

Essencay

on Dec 20, 2004

I like how when you go to the team page they put a new little folding factoid in each day

CalimeroQueen

on Dec 20, 2004

Joined also.
Seems a lot of people joined but still only you GreenReaper in the team roster.
I think we first have to upload a result to be effectively in the team.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!